Earth Day and Our Sustainability Commitment

Earth Day and Our Sustainability Commitment

April 22nd is Earth Day and this year’s theme is “Invest in Our Planet.” As an environmentally conscious company, we’re proud to share the ways Buckeye has put sustainability first. Our commitment to sustainability has been foundational to our company and that commitment will continue in 2023 and beyond. 

Safer, Greener Products

Our products promote worker and environmental safety. We proactively eliminated hazardous ingredients like butyl, solvents, and alcohol bases and replaced them with our patented Liquescent® technology. This water-based technology strengthens the cleaning power of our products while making them safer for workers and the environment.

We also began manufacturing wood floor coatings for the Buckeye Reflections® Wood Floor Program. Both our oil and water-based wood floor coatings contain the lowest VOCs (volatile organic compounds) on the market.

Several Buckeye Eco®  and Symmetry Hand Hygiene products are Green Seal™ certified. Green Seal is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment and transforming the marketplace by promoting the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services. Our Green Seal certified products not only outperform other green products, they also outperform non-green, conventional chemistries.

Plastic Reduction

We package our products in environmentally friendly ways, ensuring plastic reduction where possible. Eco and Symmetry 1.25 L bags are manufactured with 83% less plastic than rigid containers.

More than 99% of trash can liners end up in landfills. That’s why Gateway® has focused on plastic reduction during the manufacturing process. In the trash liner industry, the best way to be green is to reduce the overall plastic sent to the landfill, also referred to as Source Reduction. Gateway Liners are stronger and thinner to reduce plastic usage while maintaining industry leading strength.

Sustainable Packaging 

Eco packaging is recyclable and made from recycled materials. The Eco outer box packaging is made from 41% recycled material and the Eco inner carton packaging is made from 35% post-consumer material. Because of this, over the past year, Buckeye has:

  • Saved enough energy to power an average American home for 19 years
  • Saved 125.4 cubic yards of landfill space
  • Saved 266,000 gallons of water
  • Reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 38 tons of carbon equivalent

Buckeye continues to look forward, always searching for new ways to reduce our environmental impact and improve the lives of those who work with our products. Find out more about our sustainability initiatives by contacting your local sales representative.

Sustainability: Promoting Worker and Environmental Safety

Sustainability: Promoting Worker and Environmental Safety

With a commitment to developing products that are safer for workers and the environment, Buckeye established itself as “green” long before it became a marketing strategy. For Buckeye, sustainability means providing the most innovative, high performance and cost effective products, packaging, and programs that promote human health and safety.

Products

Green Seal™ Certified Products

Many Buckeye products are Green Seal certified. These products are safer for the worker and environment without compromising product performance. Our Green Seal certified products not only outperform other green products, they also outperform non-green conventional chemistries.

“Green Seal is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment and transforming the marketplace by promoting the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services.”

Liquescent Technology

To eliminate hazardous ingredients like butyl, solvents, and alcohol bases, Buckeye developed Liquescent technology. This water-based technology has allowed Buckeye to manufacture high-performance products while adhering to our principle of human health and safety.

R-Fit Liners

Gateway’s R-Fit liners are made with the highest quality resins to create lighter, stronger liners with less plastic. They are designed to fit specific trash can sizes, further reducing plastic waste. On average, Gateway customers reduced the amount of plastic reaching landfills by 39%.

Wood Floor Coatings

Reflections Wood Floor Coatings do not require crosslinkers, which contain polyfunctional aziridene. This crosslinker is used by other manufacturers to increase durability, but it has respiratory and nervous system health implications. In fact, many manufacturers that use polyfunctional aziridine warn consumers that it should be treated as a potential carcinogen.

Packaging

Eco and Symmetry 1.25 L bags are manufactured with 83% less plastic than rigid containers. Because our products work more efficiently and our packaging is recyclable and biodegradable, you use less product, and therefore less waste ends up in landfills.

Eco outer box packaging is also made with 41% recycled material, recyclable, and double wall corrugated. Eco inner carton packaging is made from 100% recycled paperboard and 35% post-consumer material.

Dilution Control Programs

Our dilution control systems eliminate direct contact with product and ensure our concentrated products are being used according to manufacturer specifications. Our products, packaging, and dilution control systems are also color and number coded to make them easier and safer for employees to use.

Training

Buckeye programs come with specialized training that focuses on worker and environmental safety. With standardized procedures that reduce product usage, labor, and overall cost, Buckeye is committed to enhancing product performance and safety.

Contact your representative to see how Buckeye programs can improve worker and environmental safety in your facility.

Sustainability and the Eco Proportioning Program

Sustainability and the Eco Proportioning Program

Buckeye’s goal is to provide the most innovative, high performance and cost-effective products, packaging, and programs that promote human health and safety. Because of a continued commitment to developing products that are safer for workers and the environment, Buckeye established itself as “green” long before it became a marketing strategy.

For the Eco® Proportioning Program, promoting sustainability begins with effective, safer, economically and ecologically friendly chemistry. Several Eco products are Green Seal certified, meaning they meet Green Seal’s strict requirements for protective limits on VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and human & environmental toxicity.

Because Eco products are packaged in hermetically sealed, flexible packaging, staff members are prevented from coming into contact with concentrated product. The self-contained Eco proportioning systems place worker and environmental safety first.

Eco packaging also reduces waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, source reduction is the preferred way to be green, where plastic is concerned. Eco’s outer box packaging is recyclable, double wall corrugated, and made from 41% plastic. The inner packaging is made from 100% recycled paperboard and 35% post-consumer material. Eco 1.25 L bags are manufactured with 83% less plastic than rigid containers and their flexibility eliminates product waste, delivering a 99% evacuation rate.

According to the Recycled Paperboard Technical Association recycling one ton of paper would:

Save enough energy to power the average American home for six months

Save 7,000 gallons of water

Save 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one metric ton of carbon equivalent (MTCE)

Over the past year, based on the above recycling information, Buckeye:

Saved enough energy to power an average American home for 19 years

Saved 125.4 cubic yards of landfill space

Saved 266,000 gallons of water

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 38 tons of carbon equivalent

Eco’s commitment to sustainability is only matched by its commitment to product performance. Higher concentrated Eco products outperform other green products as well as non-green, conventional chemistries.

Contact your Buckeye representative to see how Eco can transform product proportioning and sustainability in your facility.

Green Cleaning with the Eco Proportioning Program

Green Cleaning with the Eco Proportioning Program

In the cleaning industry, being green is more than providing eco-friendly chemistry. Buckeye’s Eco® Proportioning Program is committed to providing the most innovative, high performance and cost-effective products, packaging, and proportioning systems to promote human health and safety.

Green Seal Certified Products

Several Eco products are Green Seal® certified. One of the first ecolabeling nonprofits, Green Seal has pioneered the movement, setting high standards for human health, reduced environmental impact, and excellent performance. Green Seal has certified thousands of products in the hopes of producing a greener, healthier world.

Eco Green Seal certified products exemplify our commitment to manufacturing safer products for the worker and environment. In fact, Eco Green Seal certified products not only outperform other green cleaners, they outperform other conventional chemistries.  

Packaging 

Eco products are packaged with reliable and recyclable materials to ensure worker and environmental safety.

Eco 1.25 L Bags

  • Hermetically sealed to ensure no contamination.
  • Flexible to eliminate product waste, delivering a 99% evacuation rate.
  • Manufactured with 83% less plastic than rigid containers.
  • New metering plug in every bag ensures no tip clogging and highly accurate dilution.
  • Spill proof to prevent contact with concentrated product.
  • Compact size for easy transport and storage.

Eco Outer Box and Inner Carton Packaging

Eco outer box packaging is recyclable, double wall corrugated and made from 41% recycled material. Eco inner carton packaging is made from 100% recycled paperboard and 35% post-consumer material.

Eco Proportioning System

Eco proportioning systems were designed with employee safety in mind. They automatically dilute products, eliminating direct contact with concentrated products and ensuring products are diluted according to manufacturer specifications. The concentrated products diluted by Eco proportioning systems require less packaging and weigh less, eliminating additional freight/fuel charges required to ship.

The Eco Pro, Eco Element, and Eco Edge proportioning systems are user friendly. All proportioning systems are color and number coded to correspond with product packaging, making it safe and easy for employees to operate the system.

To find out more about the Eco Proportioning Program’s commitment to sustainability, contact your local Buckeye representative.

Buckeye’s Green Seal™ Products

Buckeye’s Green Seal™ Products

Buckeye’s commitment to sustainability encompasses products, packaging, technology and entire maintenance programs. In its hard surface cleaners, Buckeye has proactively eliminated ingredients like butyl, solvents, and alcohol bases. For some products, Buckeye has gone even further. For facilities looking to minimize their impact on the environment, Buckeye offers many Green Seal certified products.

Green Seal develops Environmental Leadership Standards to help manufacturers, purchasers, and consumers make environmentally responsible decisions. Their mission: To transform the economy for a healthier, greener world.

Several products from the Symmetry® Hand Hygiene Program, Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program, and Eco® Proportioning Program are Green Seal certified. They include hand hygiene products, floor finishes, and various cleaners. Click here to see a complete list of Buckeye’s Green Seal certified products.

Each product conforms to the strict standards set by Green Seal, meeting the requirements based on effective performance and protective limits on VOCs and human and environmental toxicity. Most of the Eco product line meets additional standards for minimized/recycled packaging.

Buckeye’s commitment to sustainability does not compromise product performance. To achieve Green Seal certification, products must meet rigid performance requirements, the same performance standards met by non-green products. Buckeye’s Green Seal certified products not only outperform other green products, they also outperform non-green, conventional chemistries.

Contact your local Buckeye representative to find out more about Buckeye’s products, programs, and commitment to sustainability.

Buckeye Eco® and Green Seal™

Buckeye Eco® and Green Seal™

Buckeye’s commitment to sustainability means providing the most innovative, high performance and cost-effective products, packaging and programs that promote human health and safety. This means removing potentially hazardous ingredients from products, using recyclable packaging, and much more.

The Eco Proportioning Program provides some of the best examples of Buckeye’s commitment to sustainability. The proportioning systems, packaging, and chemistry are economical, ecologically friendly, and reliable. For facilities that are ecologically focused, Eco offers 8 Green Seal certified products.

Green Seal develops standards that are credible, transparent, and helpful in making the most sustainable choices. Green Seal standards are designed with consideration of the total environmental impact of a product in mind. A product with the Green Seal Certification Mark has undergone rigorous testing and proven that it has a reduced impact on the environment.

Eco’s Green Seal certified products meet Green Seal Standard GS-37 based on effective performance, concentrated volume, minimized/recycled packaging, and protective limits on: VOCs and human & environmental toxicity. These products include Eco E11 All-Purpose Cleaner, E12 Glass Cleaner HD, E15 Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner, E16 Acid Cleaner, E31 pH Neutral Cleaner, E32 Floor Cleaner Fragrance-Free, E33 Floor Cleaner, and E61 Heavy-Duty Cleaner.

The Eco Proportioning Program’s Green Seal certified products enable ecologically friendly facilities to maintain their standards of sustainability without compromising the quality of the overall cleaning program. Eco Proportioning systems are compact, fitting in virtually any custodial closet. Its flexible packaging allows for a 99.9% product evacuation rate, and its super concentrated products reduce labor time. On top of all of the added benefits Eco provides, Eco’s Green Seal certified products work better than typical green cleaning products and often better than standard cleaning products.

Buckeye’s other custodial programs like the Hard Floor Care Program and the Symmetry® Hand Hygiene Program also offer Green Seal certified products. To learn more about all of Buckeye’s Green Seal certified products and Buckeye’s Eco Proportioning Program, contact your local Buckeye representative.

Sustainability at Buckeye

Sustainability at Buckeye

For Buckeye, sustainability means helping to create a safer environment with our products and programs, whether that be for students attending school, maintenance staff working with our products, patients, nurses, and doctors in healthcare settings, or, on a larger scale, the world as a whole. Buckeye products are manufactured, packaged, and labeled with human and environmental safety in mind.

Buckeye’s Sustainability Commitment: To provide the most innovative, high performance and cost effective products, packaging, and programs that promote human health and safety.

Attention to human health and environmental safety begins with manufacturing. We engineer our own floor finish polymers, Renaissance Performance Polymers. This gives us full control over the quality of our floor finishes and the impact they have on the environment. In our state-of-the-art polymer production facility all efforts are in place to protect our employees and reduce our environmental footprint. In fact, in regulatory air testing, governmental agencies have rated our VOC emissions as “de minimis” (too small or insignificant to be considered).

In developing our chemistries, we proactively eliminated hard surface cleaners that contained potentially hazardous ingredients including butyl, solvents, and alcohol bases. We also developed Liquescent® technology, which enabled us to manufacture high performance products while adhering to our principle of human health safety.

Each Buckeye product is housed in recyclable containers with biodegradable outer cartons. 1.25 L bags are manufactured with 83% less plastic than rigid containers, meaning less waste ends up in landfills. Eco 1.25 L bags are also hermetically sealed, eliminating direct contact with product and ensuring our concentrated products are being used according to manufacturer specifications. Our products, packaging, and dilution control systems are also color and number coded to make them easier and safer to use.

Buckeye’s Hard Floor Care Program, Symmetry® Hand Hygiene Program, and Eco® Proportioning Program also offer Green Seal certified products. Green Seal “…promotes the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services.” Buckeye has provided Green Seal certified products since 2004, giving our customers products that are safer for the worker and environment without compromising their performance.

Often, facilities will have trouble finding green cleaning products that work. Buckeye Green Seal certified products not only outperform other green products, they also outperform conventional chemistries. After replacing their green cleaning products with Buckeye Green Seal certified products, a Seattle school district Maintenance Director said, “We are confident that we are using products that are effective in their applications and safer for all end users and those exposed to the chemicals.”

Each of Buckeye’s programs comes with the proper training to effectively and safely use our products. Buckeye is committed to enhancing product performance and safety through specialized training programs and education. Our training programs focus on worker and environmental safety, and our standardized procedures reduce your product usage, labor, and overall costs. Most importantly, our thorough training programs ensure the job is done properly, resulting in cleaner and safer facilities. For schools, proper attention to cleaning procedures can result in a reduction of absenteeism. For hospitals, it can mean a reduction of HAIs. For all facilities, it means a safer, healthier space for members of the public.

To find out more about how Buckeye’s commitment to sustainability can impact your facility contact your local Buckeye representative.

Eco All-Purpose Cleaner E11 S11

Eco All-Purpose Cleaner E11 S11

Eco® All-Purpose Cleaner E11 S11 is a super concentrated, versatile cleaner that quickly breaks down and lifts soils, preventing them from being redeposited on surfaces. With E11, there is no rinsing required and no dull film left behind.

E11 is one product designed for many jobs. It has two dilution rates for multiple applications and can be used with mop buckets, automatic scrubbers, spray bottles, and other applications. It can be used on floors, walls, ceramic tile, partitions, fixtures, countertops, and other hard, nonporous surfaces. It does not require more product to work under hard water conditions and dilutes in cold water to save money.

E11

E11 is designed with human and environmental safety in mind. It’s formulated without harmful chemicals like APEO and EDTA. It is also Green Seal certified, meeting Green Seal Standard GS-37 based on effective performance, concentrated volume, minimized/recycled packaging and protective limits on VOCs and human & environmental toxicity.

Like all products in Buckeye’s Eco Proportioning Program, E11 has a low end-use cost. The Eco Proportioning Program uses proportioning systems to automatically dilute products at the proper ratio, ensuring no product goes to waste and saving employee time. The Eco Pro proportioning system can dilute for up to 6 applications while the Eco Element is more compact, diluting for up to 3 applications.

Eco All-Purpose Cleaner is also available in the S11 Eco .95 L Squeeze & Pour Bottle. This is the same product, packaged for individual product dilution. Whether you don’t have the space for a full proportioning system or have a need to dilute for more applications than your proportioning system provides, Eco Squeeze & Pour Bottles make it easy to measure and dilute individual products at the correct rate.

You can customize the Eco Proportioning Program to meet your facility’s needs, considering your space availability, how many products you will dilute, and additional security options. Contact your local buckeye representative to learn more about how Eco fits in your facility.

Eco Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner E15 S15

Eco Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner E15 S15

The Eco® Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner E15 S15 is a general purpose cleaner designed to perform the job of multiple products, successfully cleaning your facility while taking up less inventory space.

Eco Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner E15/S15 is a versatile cleaner. It is made for use on floors, walls, fixtures, and other surfaces. It also has a variety of applications. Apply E15/S15 with a cloth, sponge, trigger spray bottle, pump-up sprayer, automatic scrubber, foam gun, or mop. This hydrogen peroxide cleaner can have a powerful impact on solving your cleaning needs.

E15 S15Eco Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner is a super concentrated, powerful degreaser. It is more effective than ordinary, general purpose cleaners because of its hydrogen peroxide boost. However, this does not make it harmful for users. E15/S15 is butyl-free and environmentally responsible. It is non DOT corrosive and meets Green Seal Standard GS-37. Green Seal standards are based on effective performance, concentrated volume, minimized/recycled packaging, and protective limits on VOCs and human and environmental toxicity.

E15/S15 is perfect for athletic facilities and locker rooms. It brightens grout and eliminates odors, leaving behind a fresh orange blossom fragrance.

Because E15/S15 is part of Buckeye’s Eco Proportioning Program, it comes super concentrated in a 1.25 L bag. This bag of product is then safely and automatically diluted with the Eco proportioning system, saving time and ensuring the product dilution rate is accurate every time. E15/S15 is one of many products offered as a part of the Eco Proportioning Program. The program is customizable with products and dilution control systems to meet your facility’s needs.

Contact your local Buckeye representative for more information.

Eco Acid Cleaner E16

Eco Acid Cleaner E16

Eco® Acid Cleaner E16 is a concentrated foaming acid cleaner that removes hard water deposits, standing water rings, and soap scum buildup from a variety of surfaces. This versatile acid cleaner is made for spray bottle application and has a mild citrus fragrance with no harsh odor.

Eco Acid Cleaner E16E16 uses organic acid and passes performance tests while reducing the use of potentially hazardous ingredients. It is independently certified by Green Seal, meeting Green Seal Standard GS-37. Employee exposure to harsh chemicals is greatly reduced, as is the use of energy and natural resources.

E16 comes in a 1.25 L bag that yields the equivalent of 22 quarts of product. Because E16 and other Eco products are part of the Eco Proportioning Program, they come highly concentrated, yield more product when diluted, and take up less storage space. The Eco Proportioning Program comes with proportioning systems that automatically dilute products, taking the guess work out of product dilution, saving inventory space and employee training dollars.

Learn more about the complete Eco Proportioning Program here.