California leads the nation in rules and regulations to keep the air quality clean and clear. Depending on your point of view, this can be a blessing, an impediment, or perhaps a bit of both. Certainly, efforts to preserve the environment are admirable and worth supporting. Actually complying with these regulatory standards can provide business owners with various hoops to jump through, however—and it makes something as simple as choosing a good cleaning product feel like a bit of an uphill climb.
That’s because companies and government bodies primarily want their cleaning products to work. They want them to be powerful and effective. They also need them to leave a small eco footprint—and sometimes, these things can be mutually exclusive.
HIGH STANDARDS IN CALIFORNIA
To consider just how high the ecological standard is in California, look no further than to CARB Rule 109, which contains within it Southern California’s SCAQMD (Southern California Air Quality Management District) rule 1171(g)(1). Here there is a lengthy list of rules that suppliers and end users must follow, especially with regard to the VOC content that is allowable in a cleaning product or other solution.
VOCs are volatile organic compounds. As the Environmental Protection Agency notes, VOCs “are emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids. VOCs include a variety of chemicals, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations of many VOCs are consistently higher indoors (up to ten times higher) than outdoors. VOCs are emitted by a wide array of products numbering in the thousands.”
That California law, meanwhile, seeks to “reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds
(VOCs), toxic air contaminants, and stratospheric ozone-depleting or global-warming compounds from the use, storage and disposal of solvent cleaning materials in solvent cleaning operations and activities.”
MAINTAINING COMPLIANCE
The bottom line: In California, it’s critically important to know what the VOC content in your cleaning products is—and even to keep a log of your total VOC emission. Alternatively, you can seek out cleaning products that qualify as low-VOC, and are therefore exempt from these standards.
Fortunately, Enviroform’s products are built to meet those standards and can be used within a building/enclosed area, undiluted, and still meet the compliance requirements under the AQMD rule specified above. Especially noteworthy is our COBRA Degreaser, which provides powerful grease removal capacities and still qualifies as low-VOC.
To ensure VOC compliance in California, we invite you to learn more about this product today.