ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Italy correspondent Anna Garbagna brings news from the recent Forum Pulire event in Milan.

The fourth edition of Forum Pulire finished as a great success thanks to the presence of more than 500 delegates. A careful selection of topics, the competence and the professionalism of speakers allowed the interest of the participants to be kept alive until the very end.

Many areas of the professional cleaning sector, Italian and foreign, was present with 24 key speakers who took turns on stage during the course of the four sessions.

“The speakers we have invited to this edition,” explained Afidamp Servizi’s ceo Toni D’Andrea, “have traced the boundaries of knowledge and hope, provoking our interest regarding the challenges which we will face in the immediate future and the potential for development of the sector.”

After all, Forum Pulire is the cultural point of reference for the entire production chain: “a precious and necessary opportunity for inspiration in order to plan the offer of the future”, added D’Andrea, “this year’s edition involved Italian producers, distributors, companies and end users as well as foreign delegates. The partnership with ISSA showed its first results.”

Health and Prevention was  the first of the four topics to be addressed thanks to the help of Walter Ricciardi, president of  Istituto Superiore Di Sanità (National Health Institute), Gaetano Privitera, executive U.O. Igiene ed Epidemiologia Universitaria (Hygiene and Epidemiology) at Università di Pisa and Antonio Gaudioso, general secretary of CittadinanzAttiva, who illustrated data and practice on infections associated with the health service. The speeches emphasised the problem of drug-resistant bacteria which are one of the causes of hospital infections (one patient in three is affected).

Cleaning plays a key role in the prevention of infections and must be a core business service for hospitals; cleaning practice must be carefully planned and based on specific protocol for the correct use of products in order to achieve the desired results as established by the Carta di Bergamo, a
document of consensus for efficient and safe sanitisation in hospital environments.

Giovanni Dalò presented  Project Safety, as requested by the ONBSI, whose purpose was to promote a  wider sectorial spread of culture and awareness on the topic of safety in the workplace, introducing elements of gathering performance data.

The topic of Ethics and Environment  was then discussed with professor Giulio Sapelli who described ethics as ‘a shared value which allows different people to agree to act together in order to build future responsibilities for the common good.

The second day started under the banner of Beauty with Philippe Daverio, Kean Etro, Nicola Pozzani, Roberto Vecchioni and Mauro Felicori.

Finally, on to Innovation and Technology, and the topics of relationships between humans and robots and nanotechnology was discussed with Collin Anderson, who illustrated several of their applications in the professional cleaning field. To conclude, Angelo Migliarini mentioned that in a sector in which the operators represent the main asset, innovation is creating new skills able to re-qualify workers.
Two days rich in knowledge where we all learned something.