In the food business, employees can risk causing and themselves being responsible for cross-contamination. For example, cooked chicken cannot touch raw chicken. A surfaced used to slice raw chicken must be cleaned a certain way in order to make it devoid of contaminants that would render peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for instance, full of raw chicken. Without detailing any other examples of cross-contamination in the fast food, casual dining, catering, and other niches of the food business, what's important to know is that every restaurant and food industry competitor worth its weight in salt uses standard operating procedures to significantly reduce the likelihood of spreading microbes among raw, undercooked, and fully-cooked foods.

Further, a janitor may never be allowed to sanitize toilets with a certain type of cleaner; a blue cleaner could only be used for toilet-bowl cleaning, whereas a red might only be utilized for help cleaning countertops. Let's dig into how colors might be used in such a system and what groups of items would be allowed with one another - and more.

They Encourage Outsiders To Think Positively About Cleaning Processes

In today's world of doing business, just one bad experience that a customer has with a business can seriously harm that business' reputation permanently, if not kick them out of business entirely. When passersby see color-coded rags, they're not likely to make bad comments about that company's cleaning practices. This boosts public image and is always good for companies.

Makes Intra-Department Communication Easier

In the workplace, employees are encouraged to be more efficient in virtually however possible. One of these means of boosting efficiency is through not chit-chatting with coworkers. Colored rags used for different purposes eliminates the need for discussions about cleaning between crews

Language Barriers, Gone

Further, people that don't speak the same language often can't get anything across to one another. However, all humans - as long as they're not colorblind - see the same colors. Why not close communication gaps and stay clean while you're at it?

Believe it or not, some janitors still don't have colored custodial supplies that can easily be used with such color-coding systems. Fortunately, up-to-date supply websites do make the preventative measure of coding rags a solid idea.