The softest freshest Bread
This is our story, how we began, what we saw, and what took us on our journey to being carbon Neutral and why we joined The Cambridge Network
As consumers and indeed humans most of us eat bread, crackers, pizza, or even riveta’s the list goes on but do you really know how you get that soft fresh bread we all look for when we go shopping..?, we are all guilty of going to a supermarket or shop and picking up a pack of rolls or loaf of bread and giving it a gentle squeeze because we all want the softest freshest bread.. it’s only natural.. we want the best product for the money that we are spending. The journey to get that softest freshest bread is a long drawn out process from field to supermarket shelf, the corn or wheat is grown, when the time is right it is harvested, then the corn sent to be made into flour which is then brought on the open market and sold to be made into bread… simple. Yes...? No...!! The machines that harvest the corn as we all know are combine harvesters, but what happens to that machine at the end of harvest...? 9 times out of 10 it is washed and when I say washed, I mean washed... all the old corn stalks are removed, the panels are removed, the grain tank which normally depending on combine make and model can store anywhere from 9 to 16 tons of grain is opened and cleaned and the machine is washed before being stored until the next harvest and that’s where our journey started back in 2020.I as a new business venture decided one day that I was done with the corporate world and wanted to be my own boss so with a little bit of luck I managed to get a job as a sub contract cleaner working for a large company in Warwickshire cleaning agricultural implements, so day in day out I travelled from Cambridge to Warwick every day, 5 days a week for just over 12 months washing machines, then an opportunity came along to wash a combine harvester which I accepted. From this moment on my world changed and I found myself washing more and more and eventually branched out into the Export market cleaning mainly combines for the Export Market to Europe and further afield which meant they had to be completely free of all soil and plant material before DEFRA would issue a certificate to say that it was clean, then and only then could it be exported to the buyers country, even then passing further stringent checks at the port of entry. Now, to clean a combine to those standards takes around a week to complete until it is at the required standard to Export and during this cleaning process a diesel powered pressure washer is used.
Fast forward a year or so and as a business we decided to branch out into the office cleaning world, an extremely competitive cutthroat market with what seems like an office cleaning company on every street corner. Having won our first contract and looking to expand into more contracts, I came across an in depth report from the Cleaning Show at the Excel Centre in London which proved fascinating reading. It talked about the issue facing the commercial cleaning market and how it was changing very rapidly, this rapid change involved the use of Artificial Intelligence and Cobotics (Cobotics technology makes it possible to automate a range of tasks via interaction between humans and robotics. A cobot is designed to work together with a human as opposed to a robot who works alone) / Robotics. I started looking into the use of such technology and how we as a small cleaning company could embrace this new technology for our potential new customers. The more I looked, the more it led me down the environmentally friendly route then eventually onto the SME Climate Hub, B Corp, and Carbon Neutral Britain again with many more reports read it became so apparent and clear that this was the route we needed to go. I have always believed that what ever was happening in another country, was in that country, drought, natural disaster, forest fires... the list goes on and it was just all media hype however the more I read the more I understood that things were bad and that it was affecting my country so we decided to go Carbon Neutral and join the 1000’s of other businesses across the globe doing their own bit to go carbon neutral and help make the change. With the Artificial Intelligence supplier set up and the cobotic/robotic supplier set up we were ready to start marketing, all our chemical cleaning products were replaced with one environmentally friendly product and our carbon emission calculation done, so our journey has started. With our business now changing its policies and procedures in line with this change.
I decided to calculate how much water I had used to clean just combine harvesters since starting in business and the figure is incredible, as a rough calculation it equates as follows.
185 combines washed.
Average wash time: 5 days @ 6 hrs per day
Total weekly time: 30 hours
Pressure washer water usage: 15 litres per minute
Water usage per hour: 15 litres per minute x 60 minutes per hour: 900 litres
Total hourly water usages x total cleaning time: 27,000 litres
Total water usage per combine x total combines washed: 4,995,000 litres of water.
That’s roughly 4% of the total water held in Rutland water and that doesn’t include the diesel used to power the pressure washer...! So to put it into prospective, to ensure the bread is the softest and freshest in the supermarket, the journey needed to get to this point is a very costly one to the environment, are we all going to stop eating bread..? of course not, will this water usage every change..? of course not however we as a business have decided to phase out the agricultural cleaning side of the business and to concentrate on services that can help the environment and our customers, using the latest technology, without the use of throwing more litres of water down the drain in the name of cleaning.
This journey then took us to The Cambridge Network, being a Cambridge born and bred man myself and with my immediate family living just outside Cambridge I wanted to join a network that embraces technology and the future that it holds with like minded companies, so an email was sent to The Cambridge Network asking if we could join to which a reply was very quickly received saying yes of course, so we have now joined, with a particular interest in the Cleantech part of the network we will be able to network and meet like minded companies and individuals with an interest in technology and the environment and to move forward with our own ambitions and goals knowing that although we are a cleaning company doing a job that most people don’t want to do, we are doing our small bit for the environment and that we have the support of the Cambridge Network and like minded companies and individuals around us.
As for the softest freshest bread, will it always be there on the supermarket shelf waiting for you… well that all depends if there is still water…you decide.
Mark Clements
Managing Director
Anglia Cleaning Services Ltd
