Nonprofit Aims to Give R.I. Schools a Green Cleaning

By IAN HOLLIDAY/ecoRI correspondent

In the past five years, eight states — New York, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada and Hawaii — have passed legislation requiring or encouraging the use of green cleaning products in public schools.Few people enter a building thinking about air quality, but for Liberty Goodwin, it’s part of the job. As director of the Toxics Information Project — a Providence-based nonprofit that aims to make Rhode Islanders aware of the chemicals around them and promote the use of alternatives — Goodwin spends a lot of her time considering the atmosphere she’s breathing in.

And with the Toxics Information Project’s proposed 2010 school green cleaning legislation, set to be introduced at the Statehouse soon, she hopes to make others think about it, too.

The bill would require Rhode Island schools — public and private — to use only cleaning products that have been certified “green” by an independent agency. Goodwin said the goal of the legislation is to improve air quality in Rhode Island schools by standardizing the products used to clean them.

“What it would create in my view is a floor,” she said. “You can’t get any worse than this.”

Currently, there are no state laws regulating which cleaning products can be used in Rhode Island schools. The choice of cleaning products falls to the managers of individual facilities. However, all public school districts receiving reimbursement for construction — effectively every district — are required by the state Department of Education to implement the recommendations of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tools for Schools program.

First released in 1995, and updated as recently as last year, the Tools for Schools program is designed to help schools improve and maintain their indoor air quality. Some critics of the Toxics Information Project’s legislation suggest that because the Tools for Schools program is required in Rhode Island schools, such a law would be redundant.

Goodwin said the EPA’s Tools for Schools program is too broad, because it doesn’t address the contribution of cleaning products to overall indoor air quality.

More states are requiring public schools to use environmentally friendly cleaning products, raising debate about their costs and benefits.Products used for cleaning might seem to be the opposite of air-quality contaminants, but chemicals that are added to a cleaning solution for things as insignificant as fragrance can trigger asthma attacks and exacerbate learning disabilities, according to Goodwin.

“There’s a spectrum of sensitivity,” she said. “Everybody doesn’t react the same way, but the bottom line is these chemicals are bad for everyone.”

Perhaps the strongest anecdotal evidence for Goodwin’s claim is the Kingston Hill Academy in South Kingstown, which no longer uses any chemicals after a parent claimed her children were adversely affected by the school’s environment.

“The nurse at Kingston Hill Academy said since they stopped using all of the chemicals, the health of the children has been as good, or better,” said Chris Suchmann, facilities manager for the Groden Network, which includes the South Kingstown school. “In other words, you don’t need those chemicals to keep a building clean and healthy.”

In place of chemicals, Suchmann said the school now uses cleaning solutions made from natural ingredients by a local woman.

Despite his positive experiences with green and chemical-free cleaning, Suchmann is not without concerns about the Toxics Information Project’s proposed legislation. He said meetings he has attended about the topic have gotten contentious at times.

“There are a lot of different concerns,” he said. “The general consensus is ‘you don’t want to reinvent the wheel.’”

Suchmann said that while he wants to be greener, he has a lot of questions about the third-party certification process. Because there are thousands of cleaning products to certify, and potentially hundreds of individual chemicals in each product, there is no single test to determine if a product is “green” or not.

In one case, Suchmann said, a certified “green” floor sealer contained the same chemical as its conventional counterpart, presumably in a different combination that made it better for the environment, but he couldn’t be sure.

For her part, Goodwin doesn’t view third-party certification as a cure-all, but rather as a jumping-off point, a baseline from which to start the conversation.

Department of Education spokesman Elliot Krieger said the department could support the legislation depending on the specifics.

“A baseline is a good idea,” he said. “(The Department of Education) does not oppose the use of third-party certifiers regarding green cleaning products.”

“By requiring third-party certification, we’re at least requiring a minimum,” Goodwin said. “Our bodies are wonderful and they can handle a lot of stuff, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize our exposure.”

Ian Holliday is a recent graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in journalism. He grew up in Rhode Island, but is currently living in exile in western Massachusetts.