The Janitors' Closet

More on ocean clean-up

A quick update on the experimental project to remove floating plastic from the "garbage patch" in the Central Pacific.  The huge barrier is capturing plastic, as planned, but losing the plastic almost as quickly.  Best guess is that the barrier (propelled by wind and waves) is not moving fast enough to keep the plastic corralled. The fix currently contemplated is to enlarge it a bit, to allow for more surface area to be hit by wind and waves.  We shall see.

Again, as in commercial janitorial - it's a whole lot easier to deal with garbage, or dust, or tracked in debris when it's concentrated, or when it's produced, than when it's spread over a larger environment.  Be nice if we learned that.

There is money to be made in recycling

Arizona and California investigators have made arrests in a $16 million recycling fraud scheme. 

It seems that an Arizona trucking operation, apparently created just for this one operation (but a pretty big one), has for the last several years hauled a good many tons of used beverage containers from Arizona to California, to take advantage of a California program to, in essence, refund deposits on recyclable containers.  From the article, in All About Arizona:

"Consumers pay an additional beverage fee in California that is either five or ten cents, depending on the container’s size. That fee funds the CRV program that pays those who recycle those very containers. Containers from out of state are not included in the program due to the fact that the fee isn’t charged when the beverages are purchased." 

The firm owner, and his driver, are up on felony charges of "recycling fraud" (didn't know there was such a charge) and grand theft, and are facing up to three years, and restitution.

Many years ago, when I was in college (I shan't tell you just how many years ago) a friend from Massachusetts, attending Arizona State University, drove back here after semester break with his back seat full of soda bottles.  Seems the refundable deposit was two cents in Massachusetts, but five cents in Arizona.  Same offense, on a rather different scale.

Part of the service we offer in providing commercial janitorial service in the metro Phoenix area includes various aspects of recycling. Partly to share my tiny bit of experience from the user's standpoint, and partly to learn a bit more on the subject myself, I served a half dozen years on Phoenix's Environmental Quality Commission; the nearby picture is a few of us from the Commission touring the North Phoenix recycling facility.  But prior to this article, I had no idea just how much money could be made in recycling.

I trust the statute of limitations has expired on my friend's offense.  After all, it's been many years.

When disaster strikes

Commercial janitorial, especially in the Phoenix area, is mostly pretty straightforward.  We don't have snow, or mudslides, or hurricanes, or forest fires, so disaster prep is not much on one's radar screen.  But we are often the first call in case of a more localized disaster - say, a building fire, flood, mold infestation, disease outbreak, and so on.

Thus, a safety check list covering major disaster responses might seem a bit of overkill, but still bring a few points to one's attention.  So here's a link to such a list.

We also keep a pretty good stock of personal protective gear, and heavy-duty disinfectant, on hand - and a rolodex of disaster response firms.

Space travelers

One of the issues NASA has encountered in disinfecting its cleanrooms, and therefore in not sending earthly pathogens into space, is that some critters thrive by eating cleaning products. In addition to ethanol (which some bacteria utilize as their main fuel),

"The team found hints that Acinetobacter might also be able to grow on isopropyl alcohol, the main chemical used to wipe clean-room surfaces, and Kleenol 30, the detergent used to scrub the rooms’ floors. Even if they can’t use these substances as energy sources, they can certainly break them down. They can even withstand treatment with hydrogen peroxide, the chemical used in bleaches, detergents, and disinfectants." 

This resonates with a recent article I noticed detailing the level of organisms present in treated municipal water supplies, and the colonies that tend to build up in one's shower head.  As you might imagine, when you chlorinate or otherwise treat water, most of its inhabitants die off; only the strong survive (one is reminded of Nietzsche).  So, only a few (but resilient) types are left.  Generally, with many forms competing with one another, none will be present in large numbers; it's the large numbers of a particular pathogen that tends to be dangerous.  With only a few pathogens present, they tend to be in larger numbers, and thus more dangerous. 

I wonder if, someday, we might be backing off from disinfecting, in the commercial janitorial industry.

Again, no solutions  only trade-offs.

 

Getting Legionnaires disease at the hospital

Here's a cautionary tale, from the Lacrosse Tribune.

Four patients (thus far) have been readmitted due to contacting legionnaires disease while hospitalized for other complaints.  Legionnaires is commonly available in water, once you look; it tends to not be an issue at the usual low concentrations, and to those not already compromised, by another condition or by age, but can be fatal once it gets hold of you (that is, your lungs- it gives you pneumonia).  The bacteria tend to proliferate in stagnant water.

The hospital's mistake?  Apparently reducing water flow through the hospital's system, in times of low use - what one might think a commendable idea, for both financial and ecological reasons.

Rather need to keep up with stuff like this; we get the occasional commercial janitorial client asking for input about low water (or no water) restroom fixtures, hot air hand dryers, room deodorizers, and so on.  All have issues, it turns out.

As Frederic Hayek noted, there are few solutions - only trade-offs.

Netting space junk

A (relatively) low-tech approach to removing space trash is covered in an interesting article in The Verge.

There is a whole lot of junk (debris from broken satellites, boosters and so on) orbiting around above our atmosphere.  The more that accumulates, the more danger the stuff poses to various satellites and manned missions; even a small particle hitting you at high speed can pack quite a punch, and destroy an expensive piece of equipment.

The British satellite uses a big net to capture a given piece of debris; the current experiment is just to see if a net works.  Once you've netted the thing, the idea is, you can then use a variety of means to slow it down so that it falls out of orbit, and burns up in the atmosphere (with luck, instead of hitting someone on the head).

Seems to me that the basic issue (if the net, or another technology, works) is akin to the experimenting going on to clean junk out of our oceans: there is a lot of junk, spread over a lot of area.  Much expense involved to do the job.

Much easier to catch the stuff where it originates, or not spew it into the environment (ocean or space) in the first place.  It's a bit similar to why we push our commercial janitorial clients to rent treated walk-off mats for their building entrances:  the mats stop the soil from being tracked in, so you have soil to remove from a dozen or two square feet of mat, and not 20,000 square feet of carpet or tile.

The mat is cheaper than my janitor.

Christmas light safety

Most of our commercial janitorial customers are beginning to put up their Christmas decorations, particularly lights.  So it's perhaps a good time to review safety, and lights, and electricity.  Here's a good list of tips from the building maintenance director of Vatterott College.

A few of the high points: Don't overload circuits.  Unplug before changing bulbs or fuses.  Don't leave them on and unattended. Don't secure them with nails or staples (too easy to puncture the insulation).  Use wooden of fiberglass ladders, not metal.  Keep indoor lights indoors (as in out of the rain).  Look for the UL label. 

And save me some eggnog.

Thanksgiving - giving back

My firm's longtime janitorial client, and my even longer friend (back to when I was in college) Is Doug Whitneybell, a local architect (and a darn good one).  Every year, for 39 years, Doug has sponsored a "Turkey Trot", a Thanksgiving morning jog, or walk, or bike.  Proceeds benefit the American Diabetes Association. 

The Diabetes Association recently informed Doug that his is the longest running third-party Diabetes Fundraiser in the nation.  And, at a bit over $600,000.00 to date, it has donated more than any other event.

We donate a bit most every year.  Gives one quite a nice feeling being part of something so successful, and so meaningful.

A nice thing about doing commercial janitorial is that you get to know some really interesting folks, and some very thoughtful ones as well.

A very Happy Thanksgiving, to you and yours.

So don't take you phone to the restroom

"Germs are literally everywhere in the bathroom and surrounding surfaces and will get onto your hands thereby making the risk of phone contamination even greater. Just visualize, you put your contaminated phone close to your mouth when you make a call, or you touch your phone screen then reach up to rub your eye."

The above from an article in All About Arizona News, which happens to cover the phoenix area where we provide commercial janitorial service.  Interviewed for the article was our old friend, Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist just down the road at the University of Arizona.  An even more illustrative comment, again from the article:

“When you flush the toilet, water with feces and urine sprays about six feet in every direction.” 

So, even though it is socially unacceptable to ignore incoming calls and texts, leave the darn phone outside.

 

Where do we find such men?

In remembrance of our veterans:

Two Marine sentries, guarding a gate in Ramadi, Iraq in 2008, looked up to see a blue truck barreling down upon them.

In a speech he gave in 2010, General Kelly told their story.

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 "The Walking Dead," and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America's exist simultaneously depending on one's race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: "Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass." "You clear?" I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: "Yes Sergeant," with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, "No kidding sweetheart, we know what we're doing." They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck's engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.

Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn't have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I'd have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, "We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing." The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured ... some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, "They'd run like any normal man would to save his life.

What he didn't know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, "Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did."

"No sane man."

"They saved us all."

What we didn't know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: " ... let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass."

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines' weapons firing non-stop...the truck's windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe ... because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty ... into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

-General John F. Kelly