The Challenge

TriMet maintains 750 buses and 127 trains, as well as 15 separate facilities with administrative, sales and other offices. TriMet's cleaning requirements are extensive; the organization is responsible for cleaning the building floors, vehicle floors and windows, train and bus exteriors including the wheels and engines, seating in customer waiting areas, various rest rooms - the list goes on and on.

TriMet had been using more than a dozen cleaning solutions, which resulted in significant product waste and dollars lost as the cleaning staff was using more than one product per job. In addition, the solutions were not environmentally friendly, creating a negative cumulative effect on the staff and the environment.

"We've always been an environmentally minded organization, yet struggled to find 'green' products that could get the job done," said Dan Koenig, Facilities Services with TriMet. "While our old solutions worked, we were tired of the excessive product waste and the harshness of the chemicals. We were determined to find a better way."

The Solution
TriMet was very receptive to testing the Staples Sustainable Earth line of products and worked closely with the Staples team to see how the solutions performed in a real-world environment. Staples showcased the products’ robustness by selecting one of the organization’s most hard-to-clean areas – the underground bus pits below where the vehicles were parked. The power of the Sustainable Earth line combined with the ease of dilution, safe ingredients and cleaning versatility made the decision to move to Staples an easy one.
“The Sustainable Earth line is a perfect fit for our organization,” said Koenig. “We’d been searching for a cost-effective, eco-friendly solution for many years. It’s as if
Staples read our mind and created the products just for us.”
TriMet was able to meet all of its cleaning needs with just four Sustainable Earth products – delivering a huge cost savings to the organization. The Staples team trained TriMet’s cleaning staff on proper usage and dilution, demonstrating recommended techniques and “dwell time” (the duration the product should stand before wiping or washing) for the organization’s most common cleaning applications. TriMet’s contracted cleaning company also decided to make the switch to Staples
Sustainable Earth products once the organization experienced the products’ effectiveness and ease of use.

The Results
As a result of moving to Staples’ Sustainable Earth products, TriMet experienced a 30 percent decrease in its annual cleaning supply costs. This was due to consolidating to four main products and eliminating product waste. TriMet uses
9,000 gallons of Sustainable Earth products a year and has been thrilled with the outcome. The Sustainable Earth line has also played an important role in preserving TriMet’s drainage system, which is composed of copper piping. TriMet experienced significant corrosion with its previous products and has seen the issue nearly disappear as a result of using the Sustainable Earth line – reducing corrosion by 95
percent