Posted By Charley Farley-Trelawney Naomi If you make the decision to ban the product then fine, that is up to you and you are to be congratulated in taking that step. I guess you employ a cleaning contractor, call him/her in and explain you require a bio degradable and eco friendly product to replace bleach. I have looked at many up market 'blue chip; businesses over the years and you always spot the trail of wee white spots from the cleaners area across the carpets or, spot the changed carpet that stands out like a sore thumb. Mixed with other products (BIG NO NO) creates chlorine gas among other things, oh heck I could go on about bleach! In the hands of properly trained operatives, stored correctly etc it is fine, but you know as well as I do that Mrs cleaning operative uses it at home and therefore will want it at work. There are some wonderful replacement products available, if you don’t have the services of a specialist contractor to call on who do you get your supplies from? Ask them for details of safer products, Where I work we banned the contractor from day one from using bleach, I have (and I kid you not) caught on several occasions the cleaning staff sneaking in small quantities of bleach, when tackled, "oh gis a chance luv, them fancy chemicals is awright, but ye aint never gonna get me bowls up as white as I do wifoat bleach, do us a favor an keep it to yaself luv, theres a good chap" And that was just one occasion, the contractor now makes far more clandestine visits to check up on bleach use, so we ended up with a better service, can't be bad. CFT

Posted By Chris Pope I'm told Bleach doesn't clean it just bleaches - mostly it leaves the dirt behind only whiter dirt! Does anyone have a degree in cleaning who can verify my old wives tale ? I know bleached worktops seem to stop ants walking accross them !

Posted By John Murgatroyd The problem being this: Your supplier will provide you with the materials, and the MSDS for same. It has already been pointed out elsewhere that MSDS are not the most truthful things to rely on. To put not too fine a point on it, many are just out-and-out lies. Many of the cleaning materials you will buy will be just bog-standard detergents at a not-too-bog-standard price. STOP PRESS: Toilet cleaner. LABEL: Contains no bleach. CONTENTS: Non-ionic surfactants, Sodium hypochlorite (?) (isn't that detergent and bleach ?) Derrrrrrrr....not to be mixed with other cleaning fluids.......hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Maybe I'm a sceptic !

Posted By naomi Thankyou all that replied. The trouble we have is that we buy the bleach and other cleaning products from the local supermarket!! Then have the prob of having to ask for COSHH sheets to go with it. I have suggested we get a supplier but the person who organises all this won't hear of it!! Hence why I would like some names of alternative products and get some samples to try out. Got to admit I am a bit of a bleach freak, but what you do at home is different to what you do at work!! At this moment in time I have red raw hands can smell the bleach on me and have created a fantastic black and white spotty jumper!!!

Posted By Sean Nuttall Now just to throw a small spanner in the works.... I have come across this issue in the past where the ablutions were used by a very large workforce and to put it simply, took some hammer. My employer at the time had banned bleach for the reasons mentioned earlier in the previous replies and gone onto "safer" cleansing agents. Good so far hey Only issue was; is that bleach does get the pans looking spotlessly white with minimal human effort. The safer agents tested didn't. They required the cleaners to get stuck in with vastly more elbow grease which in turn took longer and also ended up with them on their hands and knees far longer with their arms down the pans and troughs. All that effort and the units still didn't look as white had someone given them a liberal dose of bleach. Now I am advocating the use of bleach when there are safer alternatives available but just be aware that you may introduce other scenarios you hadn't envisaged. Perhaps this isn't an issue in lighlty used ablutions but it was in ours