Your mop pads should clean footprints (not leave them)

Contec provides the cleaning tools for facilities and institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes, universities, gyms, hotels, etc. We feel that using single-use cleaning textiles is the only way to know that there hasn’t been cross-contamination from bacteria left behind in a mop or wipe that has been laundered and re-used multiple times. However, this idea goes against the common consumer mindset that reusing an item is better than one-time use. Unfortunately, for the majority of consumers, the only criteria for whether a product is “green” is if it can be recycled. But there is so much more to sustainability than a blue recycling bin! We asked an independent environmental consulting firm to measure the carbon footprint of our laundry-free Premira microfiber mops and compare it with that of a standard relaundered microfiber mop. The resulting 60-page study indicated that our single-use mops actually had a smaller carbon footprint. We knew we needed a more compelling way to get our unprecedented message across, something that would make our potential customers to stop and think, “Wow, I never thought about sustainability in those terms.” Enter Ceros. Previous projects that Ceros had completed for us made them the natural choice for this opportunity. One of our favorite things about working with them is their ability to come up with creative ideas that weren’t even on our radar. For the product life cycle assessment (LCA) project, we gave them the bare minimum of direction: take these complex sustainability concepts and package them in a way that makes an average person pause in their automatic assumptions about what makes a product eco-friendly. The interactive quiz that Ceros developed was a delightful answer to our problem! It used creative graphics to engage the user while also explaining terms from the research study. The quiz format created the opportunity to challenge the user on their existing ideas about sustainability.