Intex Solutions
Portrait of an Eco-Conscious Business

Based in Los Angeles County, Intex Solutions is the leading service provider in the specialized field of interior surface care and maintenance for corporate and retail offices in the Western US. For over 30 years, Intex Solutions has specialized in providing top-quality commercial carpet, upholstery, textile, stone, and wood floor maintenance services to organizations who want to maximize the life and appearance of their interior finishes in the most environmentally responsible way, and support their manufacturer warrantees. We also offer flood water damage control with 24-hour dispatch.

We list hundreds of major corporate clients, including Fortune 500 corporations and leaders in law, design, entertainment, property management, manufacturing, retails, and financial services throughout the Western United States. All are glad to recommend us. In addition, major carpet manufacturers endorse our services, including Interface, Shaw, Bentley, Prince Street, and Constantine. And, like any high-quality service company, we have always been committed to exceeding customer expectations for service, quality and value, thus earning long-term customer trust and loyalty. Our roster of steady clients shows we are already achieving this goal.

Pretty good success story, right? But there is another thing we must add to reflect our company’s maturation in recent years: We are committed to managing our business and providing our services in a socially and environmentally responsible way. In classic business terms, quality and profitability are good, but today that is not enough any more. We have expanded our vision and mission beyond quality of service to quality of life.

Thus, our focus now is on people, community, and our planet, and on doing our work in a way that benefits them generally, not just by accomplishing the immediate cleaning task or solving a wear problem. We understand that every action we take in a specific setting connects eventually to both the artificial and natural systems of our planet. So we work to be a good member of our community and conscious steward of our planet, and strive to set an example for other small businesses if we can.

There are three phases to this work:
First, we have always striven to be a “good” employer—treating our employees fairly and with respect, providing a supportive work environment, encouraging their development and personal growth, and providing good compensation and benefits. It also means conducting business in an ethical manner. And it means donating a percentage of our profits to worthy social and environmental causes. All this we have done since day one.

Second, for years we have been working to “green” our own internal business practices, in order to reduce their impact on the environment and on society. This is an ongoing process of evolution—there is always more we can do. So far, we have installed solar panels on our headquarters building to help reduce air pollution caused by conventional energy generation and its effect on global climate change. We drive low-emission hybrid company vehicles for the same reason. And we became a charter member of California’s Global Climate Change Registry. We use social and environmental responsibility as a criterion for our corporate and institutional purchasing practices: We now purchase recycled paper, plastic, and other recycled and “green” office products, and we recycle paper, plastic, and other reusable materials. These practices actually save us money, and we pass savings on to our customers. And we educate and encourage our employees to be good environmental stewards in their personal lives, and enhance their job satisfaction by helping them to feel like part of the solution, not the problem.

Third, naturally we transitioned long ago to providing our interior maintenance and care services in an environmentally conscious manner, in order to enhance the health of the interior environments we service, protect our clients’ and our own employees’ safety and well-being, and minimize our impact on our planet’s natural resources.

Thus, part of our company’s evolution has been a shift away from using old-fashioned, potentially harmful methods and materials to clean and service textiles and hard flooring surfaces, and substituting safe ones in their place. Taking this even further, we have shifted from focusing on simply maximizing carpet appearance and longevity (the classic client concerns), to focusing primarily on the health and safety of our customer’s employees in their built environment (the building envelope). We clean for health first.

Here we are an industry leader by example. We have helped develop, define, and pioneer Green Best Practices in our service niche, and we use these exclusively. We also essentially define the standard for safe work in our field. This means we have made a full commitment to exclusive application of effective but non-harmful practices (including, for example, our methods of recovery of vapors from spot cleaning), and the use of proprietary, Intex-tested, safe and harmless substances (typically biodegradable and recyclable). [For more information, ask for a copy of our Environmental Health and Safety Guidelines for interior surface maintenance services, “Taking Care of People and the Environment.”]

With our broadened vision, Intex has become a specialized provider of health-focused built-environment management services (specifically, maintaining interior surfaces). The field of indoor environment management has evolved rapidly in the last several decades and is now a recognized profession with its own formal trade associations. While awareness of threats to (and from) the outdoor environment—local, regional, and global—has gradually become widespread around the world in the last half-century, broader awareness of environmental issues in internal building spaces is more recent, even in the US. Today, modern buildings, with their sealed-air systems, heating and air conditioning, and artificial surfaces and surface coverings, are where much of our national workforce spend large amounts of their time every workday. Many elements of these environments (including interior surfaces) affect employee health, stamina, mental focus, and morale. This in turn affects absenteeism and productivity—and job satisfaction. Managing the safety, cleanliness, and healthiness of these environments is gradually becoming a key focus of building management—one that also helps the bottom line. Accordingly, the indoor cleaning industry needs to shift from simple housekeeping–type cleaning, to interior environmental management services, as we have done.

Spreading the Word
It is our goal to continue making Intex Solutions a model of environmentally and socially responsible practices. Thus we are sharing and spreading what we have learned in two streams:

(1) We help our current customers as they widen their business mission and vision to include environmental consciousness and social responsibility. We help them to understand the high value of employee health and the role of interior maintenance in sustaining that health. We share information and resources on how to green their operations and join us in stewardship of the environment. (Example: We help them to appreciate how extending carpet longevity keeps more non-recycled carpet and padding out of landfills.) We are developing a resource guide and resource links for our Web site to help them as well.
(2) We have begun to market our services actively to specific commercial, nonprofit, and religious institutions that prefer to do business with a socially responsible, enviro-conscious company as a value-add in meeting their own needs. Thus we offer to become a “positive force-multiplier for good,” aligning our values with theirs to propagate Green Best Practices in as many fields as possible. So we can all work together to do well by doing good.

We are also a working example that “green and clean” practices can mean good bottom-line business, too. Fact: Our enviro-conscious internal practices, and use of green practices in our services, not only keep employees and the environment healthier and safer—they save us and our clients money.

Our goal is to be the best company in our field (not necessarily the biggest or most profitable). We believe that our success at satisfying customers and motivating employees, and acting in responsible ways, will bring growth, long-term profitability, and a sense of satisfaction in making our community and our planet better places to live.