New Backpack for Greener Schools

As school districts transfer to Green cleaning, many are wondering how Green their other cleaning tools are, like the vacuum cleaners they use.

“Vacuum cleaners play a big role in protecting indoor air quality [IAQ],” says the district manager for a large New York school district. “In fact, older or poorly performing machines can release so many impurities into the air, they can wipe out the benefits of going Green.”

According to the manager, IAQ is a big issue in upstate New York because the winters are long and cold. “To save energy, we have been making our school buildings airtight,” he says. “But, this means we have to double our efforts, making sure the cleaning products—including the vacuum cleaners—we use protect IAQ.”

Deciding it was time to look for a more advanced vacuum cleaner technology, the manager worked with his local jansan distributor examining various vacuum models. But, instead of the usual upright machine, what intrigued him most was a backpack just introduced by Tornado®: the PV 6 Pac-Vac® backpack vacuum cleaner.

Why the Interest?

The first thing the manager noticed is that the PV 6 is a true-HEPA vacuum cleaner. This means not only is the exhaust HEPA filtered, preventing 99.9 percent of all impurities from being released into the air, but the entire casing of the machine is airtight as well.

But the manager acknowledged Green isn’t everything. How about performance?  With its quiet, 1.9-hp motor, the PV 6 cleans more than 7,000 square feet per hour—twice that of an upright machine.

“The PV 6 was a little surprise,” the district manager says. “The case may be yellow, but this machine is all Green inside.”