WHAT SUSTAINABILITY MEANS FOR OUR CEO
MESSAGE FROM ANTOANETA TSOCHEVA
Eco-friendliness and sustainability is a process – a lifelong journey. It’s about persistence. It’s about the small everyday choices that we make to protect our health and the environment.
As the founder and CEO of a prominent, London-based cleaning company, I am in a position where my choices can have a significant impact on the environment. I know my clients, their businesses and their specific cleaning needs. This puts me in a very peculiar position, where I can see the situation from up-close.
My sustainability journey began a couple of years ago, with the project of one of our biggest clients at the time. It was a hostel-cleaning job, where the premises needed to be cleaned at the end of each year. We had to use heavy (and, as I came to realise – quite dangerous) cleaning solutions, which could put the health of my workers at risk. Soon after I learned of the dangers, I decided that we can’t work with them any longer.
It was a big and really well-paid project, but chemical exposure was not worth the risk. And, since I didn’t want to just straight-up cancel the contract that we’d had for the last five years, I simply tripled our price. Naturally, they weren’t willing to pay that much and cancelled. But, even though I had to let that customer go, I wasn’t worried. I was doing it for a good cause, and I knew that I would find more opportunities in the future. Safer opportunities that wouldn’t put my cleaners in danger.
