Products certified under an international third-party certification may be compliant with the credit criteria. The Reference Guide provides a list of acceptable Type 1 eco-labeling programs. If your product isn’t labeled by one of the approved eco-labels, it’s incumbent upon you to provide clear documentation demonstrating that the product is comparable to or more rigorous than the accepted standards.

For multi-tenant buildings, up to 10% of the floor area may be exempted from almost any credit if the area is not under management control. If you do not control the cleaning in more than 10% of your building, you will have to work closely with your tenants in order to achieve the credit. For the green cleaning prerequisite policy, on the other hand, the scope of that document can be limited to the areas directly controlled by building management. This applies to the prerequisite policy only, and not to this credit.

You can use screenshots of the Green Seal website as long as you indicate the products that are actually being used at the project building by highlighting, underlining, circling, etc. Also, it will make the review process easier if you make sure that the product name that you include in your credit documentation precisely matches the information listed on the Green Seal website.

Work with all of your vendors to identify alternative cleaning products that meet the credit criteria. Remember that only purchases that take place during the performance period apply to the credit calculations and so cleaning activities that occur infrequently may not be included if they take place outside of the credit performance period.

LEED Interpretation ID #2460 allows teams to exclude plastic trashcan liners that have a thickness of 0.7 mil or less. This Interpretation was approved for LEED v2008 projects, but has not been formally approved for LEED 2009, v4, or v4.1 projects. We recommend confirming with GBCI before applying this Interpretation to your credit documentation.

While microfiber rags are considered an environmentally preferable cleaning product, they are not currently recognized in the credit criteria and should be completely excluded from your calculations.

No, you don’t need to track those items, and in fact there are a lot of cleaning-related items that aren’t covered under the scope of this credit. Rather than looking at the whole universe of cleaning products, it’s a lot easier to approach this option by looking at the four major categories that are covered: cleaning products, cleaning chemicals (disinfectants, metal polishes, floor strippers, etc.), disposable paper products, and hand soaps and sanitizers.

Project teams often forget to include hand soaps and hand sanitizers when documenting the credit. Also, it’s important to include janitorial paper products and trash bags here, and not under the purchasing credit.

No. Vacuums must be CRI certified, operate at 70 dBA or lower, have safeguards, and have an ergonomic design to count as sustainable.

Yes, you must include all vendor equipment and leased equipment that is used to clean the project at the time of inventory. That said, for multi-tenant buildings, up to 10% of the floor area may be exempted from almost any credit if the area is not under management control. If you do not control the cleaning in more than 10% of your building, you will have to work closely with your tenants in order to achieve this option.