Eco-friendly cleaning business goes by bike

Off to another “greening”.
(Photos © J. Maus)

Local cleaning business, Q19 Greening, is looking to buy a fleet of Dutch cargo bikes to make good on their eco-friendly mission. I met up with their first bike-enabled employee the other day to see how things were going.

Greg Davis calls himself a Q19 “greener” (instead of cleaner, get it?) and he’s the company’s first employee to get to roll around with a customized Dutch “bakfiets” cargo bike. Davis’ territory is lower Northeast and parts of Southeast.

Custom-painted cargo bin.

As he loaded up the bike with a vacuum, brooms, and several bottles of cleaning fluids, Davis explained that Q19 is a one year-old subsidiary of Capital Property Management Services, a Portland-based company that manages hundreds of apartment and office buildings throughout the city. According to Davis, Capital Property Management launched Q19 as a way to save money on move-out cleanings, and now they’re dedicated to saving the earth.

Q19 uses all environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, but best of all, they are in the process of buying bakfiets for all their cleaning staff.

Davis says business is very good; “Currently we only do jobs for properties managed by our parent company, but we’re looking to expand…a couple of brewpubs in town are interested and this bike has attracted a lot of attention.”

— See more photos of Greg Davis and his Q19 bakfiets in our photo gallery.