Green Cleaning

FactoryCat Industrial Scrubber &Sweeper Equipment

FactoryCat scrubbers provide outstanding quality and durability to last years and years.

FactoryCat’s Pledge to our Customers and Planet

FactoryCat is in business to make a difference. Today’s realities dictate that thinking “Green” be an integral part of our company and its products.

Accordingly, our goal is to continue to reduce our impact on our favorite planet’s outdoor environment, while improving the indoor environments of our customers.

Our efforts follow these five basic principles:

We build our machines to last. We intend each of our machines to give 25 years of useful service in careful hands and believe that, in this, we outpace others in our business by a factor of two or three. By doing this, the materials, energy and labour inputs will do more work before they expire.
More cleaning and ewer Resources. We build our machines to conserve resources in operation so they can consume less electricity, water and soap to perform a given task.
Reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and dust.
We employ “Green Engineering” in all our designs.. We endeavour to design products that, through their basic design, will promote proper use by the cleaning professionals who use them as tools, and proper maintenance by the professionals who take care of them. When they finally reach end of useful life, we build them to be easy to recycle.
Clean manufacturing. We produce our products with the cleanest processes current technology allows and pledge to adapt promptly the best practice technologies in the future, when they become available.

Building machines to last.

We should start by saying that model-for model, our machines weigh about 15% more than others, and so use up more of the world’s resources in their manufacture.

But the idea behind this is as old as the hills: by building our machines to perform for an extended period, (up to 25 years) the resources of the planet (be they iron, energy or human labour) can be stretched over many years of machine use.

To achieve this goal, we do the following:

Make machines with massive main frames so they can withstand the slings and arrows of real-world use.
Our machines are also totally rebuildable, making service life a matter of choice.
On our scrubbers, machines that run in liquid cleaner, we use only stainless steel fasteners so the parts they attach to the machine can be serviced if need arises.
On all machines, our steel parts are protected by a 15-step powder paint process (which is itself the most ecologically sound “paint” process). Powder paint, a baked-on polymer coating, offers many times the protection against corrosion that is afforded by conventional enamel.
We make sure that purchased components (batteries, motors, gear axles, switches, etc) are the best, longest-lived components available in commerce.
We design in “smallest factor” component replacement to save future resources. Example: Our machines use easy-to-change switches (at just a few rands per switch) instead of replace-it all thousand rand membrane panel controls.
The resultant reduced repair cost encourages the customer to keep his old machine.
We minimise the wear factor in “wear items” so even these replacement items last longer. Our sweepers and burnishers use virtually permanent filters instead of throwaway paper ones saving the basic Brushes: Our disk brushes have more fibre than other manufacturers’ brushes and, for a given amount of work, will last longer, getting more mileage out of the brush core and mounting hardware. Such longer component life also reduces shipping as fewer brushes, etc. are required per yer.
Use technology to extend life. Our Central Command II control system automatically starts all motors (traction drive, vacuum, brush, etc.) over one second. The instantaneous starts used by most machines in our business are hard on the motor itself, as well as on parts used for power transmission. Since switching to “slow start” we have approximately doubled major component life.

Using Up Less to Clean Better

Our machines are well-respected for their cleaning performance. We’re able to transmit more energy to the floor when it’s needed.

But to compensate, when the need for extra power is not there (when we’re just maintaining a job already done) we lead the pack in water and energy conservation.

WATER CONSERVATION. Our electronically-controlled scrubbers use an electronically-generated pulse to carefully control water flow. A skilled operator can dial it in precisely to avoid waste. For applications where operators will not have the time to learn to operate the machine to its maximum efficiency, the “ECON” switch (available on all electronic scrubbers in 2008), will allow an automatic 30% reduction in water sent to the brushes (along with a reduction in power sent to the traction, brush and vacuum circuits). Our efficient wiper and splash curtain system add to the use extracted from each ounce of water.

SAVE THE SEWERS. The other end of the water formula is waste water. All of our scrubbers also feature “Drain-Saver” ® a simple in-tank screen that prevents large debris from adding to the contamination thrown down the sewer. Instead, the debris the machine picks up can be shaken out into a dumpster.

REDUCING ENERGY CONSUMPTION. Our 2008 electronic machines can be equipped with an optional “ECON” switch that, when activated, reduces battery power consumption for vacuum, brushes and traction drive, and also reduces water consumption.We were a pioneer in using AC-Inducted motors, which consume 10-25% less power than regular D.C. motors for the same work. Our Central Command on-board electronics carefully monitor energy use where it counts, such as at the brush pressure level on scrubbers, which consume more energy through the brushes than through everything else combined. Central Command carefully evaluates and readjusts the brush pressure many times per second.

LESS SOAP/MORE CLEANING. Overuse of “soap” is a problem in our business. It not only wastes resources, but actually works less well than accurate soap/water ratios. RPS was an early pioneer in the use of built-in portioners in dosing soap concentrate and in assuring its accurate mix with water. Today we offer “SUDS”, (our Super-concentrated Universal Dispensing System), which not only injects on-board concentrate and mixes it with water at an operator-selected ratio, but also modifies the amount of mixture laid down on the floor in consort with the water selection chosen. SUDS injects the soap directly at the brush. By not flowing through the valve or filter, SUDS reduces potential service issues as well.

Reduces Emissions

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS. All of our machines, at present, are battery-powered and produce no greenhouse emissions on their own.
However, the storage batteries use power generated by the local power company. By adding to the efficiency of our machines’ battery-power consumption, we are reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced by those plants to recharge the machine batteries.

AIR QUALITY. Battery machines are inherently “cleaner” than internal combustion ones, although batteries are charged using electricity from the local power company. The principal emission of batteries, made during charging, is of hydrogen gas, one of the natural elements in air. Air quality is affected by VOC’s, fumes generated by some soap products. We offer our customers a full range of Green detergent options through our affiliate PowerCat Solutions. These products can be viewed at the website: www.powercatsolutions.com

DUST EMISSIONS. Dust is a potential product of of dry-process cleaning (sweepers and burnishers). Modern sweepers made for indoor use, and burnishers, all have on-board filtration. Ours is finer than any other manufacturer provides (1 micron filtration instead of three microns) and so dust emissions are theoretically lower. Our emissions are also lowered by these means:
Sweepers: have very high airflow to make up for leaks that may occur in the rubber seals to the floor. We generate five times the airflow needed for maximum dust control in a perfectly-tuned machine.
Burnishers: use both the “push” of the burnishing pad to the filter and the pull of our optional “filter vacuumizer” system to help assure that all burnishing dust ends up in the filter, and not in the air. This dual system is exclusive to our burnishers.

These are just a few of the reasons why our scrubbers and sweepers are ahead of the pack in doing our part to keep mother earth happy and healthy for generations to come.