Dustbane Products Ltd.
100 Years of Success

For 100 years, Dustbane Products Limited has proven itself to be a leader in the sanitation supply industry by dedicating itself to simplifying the cleaning process. As a market-driven Canadian manufacturer, the company’s goal is to provide superior customized maintenance programs complemented by the appropriate products, training and services.

Dustbane was founded in 1908 by two ambitious young men who arrived in Saint John, NB, with big dreams and even bigger motivation.

Chester E. Pickering and George W. Green proposed to sell a product to customers who were using a similar product that they could get for free – sawdust. However, the Pickering and Green “sawdust” was sawdust with a difference. But, to potential customers the only differences were its colour, its odor and the fact that it would cost them money.

With enthusiasm and energy of youth, Pickering and Green had a firm conviction that they had a product that would sell. And sell it did.

Not only did they put their personal stamp on that original product – the green, pine-scented Dustbane sweeping compound – they also imprinted their personal philosophies on their company – Dustbane Manufacturing Company Ltd.

The past 100 years has brought an abundance of change to sanitation products and procedures, and Dustbane has been there every step of the way. There are currently over 200 Dustbane products for cleaning, finishing, polishing, scrubbing, sealing and sweeping, all of which result in safe, clean and healthy environments in factories, offices and institutions.

The company’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Marc Galarneau, credits the company’s leading position in the sanitation industry to the management code that started it all 100 years ago.

“It’s a philosophy that encourages the Dustbane team to respond to the needs of today’s customers, while at the same time anticipating the needs of customers tomorrow,” he said. “Teamwork means a lot at Dustbane. And, some of the most valuable players on our team are our customers.”

While the past 100 years have brought many changes and improvement to the Dustbane product line, one thing hasn’t changed – the company’s customers remain its most important source of new ideas. In fact, Galarneau said that the majority of the company’s new or modified equipment and chemicals are produced as a direct result of suggestions made by customers.

This problem-solving approach is readily evident in both the company’s Chemical and Equipment Divisions, where all work begins with a thorough understanding of customer needs.

According to Galarneau, in the Chemical Division, products don’t earn the Dustbane label until they have proven their superior quality in extensive laboratory tests and a variety of field tests. All of the chemical formulations are now developed in Dustbane’s laboratories.

Research and development in the company’s Equipment Division is a wide ranging task. Everything from simple, cosmetic modification of an existing product, to designing and creating a whole new machine, is handled by this division.

“There’s a science to sanitation,” Galarneau said. “It’s reflected in every step of the process of researching, developing and creating the special formulas that meet customers’ exact sanitation needs. There’s also an art involved; the art of managing a vast range of products that guarantee effective and trustworthy solutions to the most difficult sanitation problems.”

According to Galarneau, Dustbane has successfully mastered both the art and the science. Dedicated teams of researchers are proud of their creations. And, generations of maintenance professionals have learned “they need not look any further than their local  Dustbane distributor for one-stop sanitation service,” he said.

“We are all well aware that better products mean better performance and ultimately lower maintenance costs for you, the customer,” Galarneau said. “A break-out of average maintenance costs today shows that 90 per cent is for labour. Only five per cent is for the chemical product. It’s a statistic we’re proud of at Dustbane, and we’re working hard to even improve that.”

While the company still offers the sweeping compound that made it famous, more and more Canadians are recognizing Dustbane as a single-source solution to all their cleaning needs.

“Sanitation professionals are well aware that our extensive line of cleaning maintenance products, and an excellent source of advice, are just a phone call away,” Galarneau said. “Dustbane representatives from coast-to-coast are trained to identify the solutions that best apply to your particular cleaning needs. They are armed with a wealth of maintenance information and a vast array of products to choose from.”

Maintenance professionals across Canada can turn to Dustbane for a variety of items, including a full selection of company-made liquid and dry chemical products; a complete range of powered scrubbing, polishing and carpet care machines; vacuum cleaners and accessories; dispensers; and more.

Additionally, during the mid-80s, the company developed an environmental doctrine to make sure that everything it did would help to protect the environment without compromising performance and costs. Opinion polls showed that Canadians had a growing concern for the environment, but nobody seemed to be doing very much about this issue. According to Galarneau, Dustbane had a vision for the future and it seems that now time has finally caught up with us.

In 2002, the company introduced its Green Circle Approach to eliminate alkyl phenol ethoxylates (APE) butyl cellosolve, ammonia phosphate, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and Tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA) from its products.

“This was our first step towards environmental sustainability and reducing our environmental footprint,” he said.

By 2004, over 95 per cent of Dustbane products received the Green circle approval. One year later, the company introduced five more products that not only met the strict Green Circle requirements, but are approved by the EcoLogo program, North America’s most widely-recognized and respected certification of environmental leadership. By 2007, the number of EcoLogo Certified products doubled to 10 – including Quat Plus, Canada’s first CCD-166 approved quat.

According to Galarneau, in the future Dustbane will continue to be one step ahead of the industry by developing more and more products that can make sustainability a reality.

“We want to continue to create products that allow users to reduce operating costs, improve employee productivity, reduce absenteeism and lower health costs,” he said. “We will be developing more safe EcoLogo certified products that outperform regular, non-environmentally products.”

For now, Dustbane will remain at the cutting edge of technology and will continue leading the sanitation industry for another 100 years.

For more information on Dustbane’s extensive product array and services, visit the company’s web site at www.dustbane.ca.