Welcome to the “Cleanest LEED (Green) Building in the World”! Oh, I should mention this is the future home of the “World Cleaning Museum”… “Museum of Clean”… or “CleanGreenWorld”—we haven’t come up with the perfect name for it yet. So, you can’t take a tour just yet, unless you want to stop by and see it being built—which some folks might actually enjoy, because as the sages say, the journey is often more exciting than the destination. But if you’re not quite ready to jump on a plane and fly to Pocatello, Idaho to see us pour concrete, you have the luxury of sitting back and watching it unfold via our Blog… welcome to an incredible journey!

Don’t feel bad if you’re not familiar with the term “LEED building” because I didn’t know what it was, even though I’ve been a leader in cleaning the industry for 50 years. LEED is a standard from the US Green Building Council which stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.” It’s actually one of the few standards that really means something in the flood of green marketing that we fondly call “green wash.”

My name is Don Aslett, by the way. I’ve been called just about everything from King of the Toilet Ring, to the Urinal Colonel, to mention just a few nicknames on the list. This is probably because I’ve cleaned toilets all my life. When my first book on housecleaning was published in the 80’s, they called me “Duke of the Dustpan” when I promoted it over in England. But the title I’m proudest of after selling millions of books and doing 10,000 (and counting) media appearances, speeches, seminars, and training presentations, including being on Oprah, Regis, etc., is “America’s #1 Cleaning Expert.”

America’s #1 Cleaning Expert

This is my title and I take very seriously because I’ve worked for more than 50 years in an industry, a job that our politicians say “Americans won’t do” (cleaning and janitorial work). I just turned 73 and decided that’s a put-down of all of us janitors in the world. That’s one reason why I decided to create the soon-to-be world famous cleaning museum. Actually that decision was made a few years ago, but it was just last year that I found the perfect building to house this epic structure—the Museum of Clean. I want to do this to celebrate and commemorate the impact “clean” has had on the world, not to mention to elevate the estimated 10,000,000 professional cleaners working away in hospitals, offices, factories, airports, and many other places this very night.

The building destined to house this irresistible attraction is a dream come true. Not only is it the tallest building in my home town (where I started my cleaning business in 1957— Varsity Contractors, Inc., a business that is now a $150 million concern), but I even remember being the janitor there back in my college days. Best of all, it is solid concrete (I’ll share more about my love for concrete later).

To honor the industry I love, I couldn’t just make a dusty old museum that only sixth graders would be happy to see, as a way to get out of school. No, I want it to be a world-class vacation destination! When we started the design, my son Rell, the project manager, said, “In addition to making this the Disneyland of Clean, we need to make sure the museum is also an environmentally friendly facility.” And although a clean environment has always been our goal, we decided to challenge ourselves and the green movement to make sure this was no mere green wash—just posturing to be politically correct. The rating system awarded by the US Green Building Council, that I mentioned earlier, is divided into: Bronze (you are paying attention); Silver (you actually have done something); Gold (my hat goes off to you—you are committed, no green wash here); and Platinum (clearly a world-class leader). Our goal is Platinum, and to be one of the few at that level that is an historical building. (Did I mention our building is almost 100 years old?)

So WELCOME… you will see us bring together the “Cleanest LEED Building in the World,” by challenging design, re-thinking how we clean, the processes and chemicals we use, improving the health of the occupants, protecting the workers, equipment we use, we will actually “define clean” something never done before, and we encourage you to engage and be a part of it! Okay… maybe you aren’t as excited about clean as I am—just wait and see how we put the spotlight on clean, then you’ll believe! This will be the most important project of my life, the destination will be worth it when we cut the ribbon.

Good Cleaning!

Don Aslett

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Clean Green World: the cleanest building in the world!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.