Responsible Tourism Clean is… beautiful and environmentally friendly

In Tuscany, Casa Cares experiments with low-impact solutions in the cleaning industry.

Housekeeping is one of the central aspects of the life of an accommodation facility. A hotel room, a bathroom, a breakfast room must, before anything else, be clean. From cleanliness comes a good part of the comfort experience we experience during our stay. Clean and environmentally friendly: can it be done?

However, there are at least three other aspects for which cleaning is of great importance: functionality, safety, and sustainability. Cleaning products must be effective, easy to use in not too long a time, safe for the workers and employees, and, in our opinion, environmentally sustainable.

Holding all these aspects together is by no means easy, and that is why at Casa Cares we have decided to dedicate 2023 to researching and experimenting with low-impact products that are also easy to use, safe, and enjoyed by staff and guests. The facility in Reggello (FI) is part of the Waldesian Homes, vacation homes and hotels of the Waldensian Diaconia.

Clean and environmentally friendly

“Clean and environmentally friendly” lends itself to many interpretations. There are those who offer products with natural cleaning substances; those who offer 100% biodegradable chemical surfactants. There are those who try to reduce packaging and those who offer recycled or recyclable plastic bottles. In short, it is not easy to even decide where to start! Not least because, in most cases, there is no product that meets multiple sustainability criteria simultaneously.

At Casa Cares, we have set two goals: to drastically reduce plastic and to adopt the following product selection criteria:

• No plastic
• Natural ingredients
• Small size (i.e., soluble products)

The issue of plastic is central because each plastic bottle containing detergents that we all use will remain in the environment between 400/1000 years and can never be “biodegraded” in an environmentally friendly way. The number of plastic bottles used in a hotel is high: these are products that are used for a few weeks after which they are disposed of.

What detergents for environmentally friendly cleaning?

Finding detergents that are not contained in plastic is very difficult. Often the alternative is detergents on tap (in which plastic is present anyway), which are not so easy to manage in the workplace. Something we have found and tried but not everything has yielded satisfactory results. The trial is still ongoing, meanwhile some products have convinced us and we will tell you about one in particular a few lines below.

Ideal detergents have these characteristics: they are more than 90 percent biodegradable; they have natural surfactants; reduced plastic-free packaging; standard-compliant technical and safety data sheets; they are easy and safe to use; and they are satisfactory in result.

A first goal achieved

We found a decidedly satisfactory solution for what concerns washing in the washing machine: a detergent in sheets composed of dehydrated soap, contained in a small cardboard box about the size of a rice box and very light. Basically no plastic, no weight, reduced truck space, 60 washes. This detergent meets all the above criteria so it is perfect.

Considering that a 750ml or 1lt bottle is usually enough for 15/23 washes and a 5lt bottle for 100 washes, this little box saved us at least 4 bottles of the small ones and about 1 in every two small boxes of the 5lt ones. It saved so much space on the truck that delivered them to us, didn’t break the warehouseman’s back, and didn’t take up space in our laundry room.

In short, one washer one sheet. Environmentally friendly and simple. The soap is made from natural substances, not tested on animals. The result is great.

The research continues

For the time being, we have not found a floor cleaner that meets all the criteria, but we are using one in capsules that dissolve in water and that allows the same bottle to be used over and over again; although it is not made from natural substances and is completely biodegradable, it allows us to drastically reduce plastic consumption.

The year 2023 is not yet over, and in the coming months we will continue our quest to replace as many products as possible and reduce our environmental impact more and more, while also trying to understand what our guests think about it.