Hawke’s Bay owned and operated company The Clean Crew are the first commercial cleaning company in New Zealand to become Toitū carbon zero certified. Owner Gary Singh stated “in these times of heightened environmental awareness, we believe it is important to take the steps that we are taking to do the best that we can to reduce our impact on the planet. With the fight on climate change, we identified that our biggest impact in business was environmental, so we took responsibility for this and changed our ways. This decision was not made just for earth, but for our children’s futures too. We believe that if everyone were to reduce and manage their carbon footprint, we could see an impressive reduction of carbon worldwide.”
Part of The Clean Crew’s commitment to the environment meant changing products they used every day, travelling smarter to reduce petrol and diesel used, and using less paper. Using less paper might seem like a difficult task Clean Crew found this easy, “we recognized a large chunk of our paperwork was sales and communication based, which meant we needed to be bought into the 21st century and get online with all our documents.” They partnered with New Zealand owned IT company Black Quadrant to have an internal app developed to communicate with the crew and clients, “everything that was once printed on paper, is now viewed on a smart device” says Singh. The added benefit is security for clients and staff, “all our staff are GPS tracked from start to finish, this allows us to ensure they were at the job at this time and left at this time”.
With the advice from Nik at BQ, The Clean Crew were also able to streamline their auditing process and developed their own system. “Our Convoy app can now audit the premises of our client in real time, all with the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation, we are presented with a percentage of cleanliness.” Singh says, “the journey to attain Toitu carbon zero certification has led to many unexpected benefits.”