Physical Place:

Indoor Environmental Quality

START Metric #39:

Green Cleaning

Guides & Resources

‘How To’ Guides

  • How to Implement a Green Cleaning Program

    Guidance from the New York Office of General Services (OGS), that can help any school lay the groundwork, assess, plan, implement and evaluate their green cleaning program.

  • Green Cleaning for Early Care & Education

    Green Cleaning for Early Care and Education

    Green Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting: A Curriculum for Early Care and Education, developed by the University of California and others, explains the most effective and safest ways of cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting in ECE.

  • How to Transition 10% to Green Cleaning

    How to Transition 10% to Green Cleaning

    A GSA Guide to help you achieve Tier 1 of the Green Cleaning Metric in START, through planning, implementation and evaluation and additional resources.

  • Healthy, Green Purchasing for Asthma Prevention

    From the US Center for Green Schools, a guide to help schools & districts introduce and implement health-informed purchasing practices into school policy.

Additional Resources

  • Customizable templates, audit forms & spreadsheets

    From New York OGS, free resources for assessing buildings, conducting custodial inspections, inventorying cleaning products, surveying housekeeping satisfaction, and a sample of a building entryway policy.


 Contact us at guides@greenschoolsalliance.org if:

  • You have a free resource to contribute or recommend that can help schools take action around this specific sustainability metric.

  • You authored a guide included here and have information about the Cost, Difficulty or Impact rating.