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Save Cleaning Accounts with Better Technology

Reduce germs in a restrooms! New technology with HEPA Filters and UV light. This product changed Joel's mind on air hand dryers.
9 Jul 2024

Save Cleaning Accounts & Improve Restroom Service with Better Technology

Save Cleaning Accounts & Improve Restroom Service with Better Technology

Episode 34

 

Ray

Joel, we’re back. And I understand we’re talking about, Cleaner Restrooms Through Technology. Fill me in here.

 

Joel

There’s a lot going on. We all know that dirty restrooms result in lost contracts. Dirty restrooms result in businesses not having repeat customers. Restaurants lose customers because of dirty restrooms. Restrooms are always high on everybody’s list of wanting training, wanting understanding, and sometimes they get it, and sometimes they don’t implement the things that they’ve learned about.

 

Ray

So, I mean, other than doing a good job of training your frontline employee, how do we do that? I mean, what sort of technology are we talking about here?

 

Joel

There’s several things. As a result of COVID, a lot of things have come along. There were things on the market that nobody used to use, but because of COVID, it changed a lot of things. In restrooms, a lot of them are being designed through architecturally, being handled differently with just the construction. So that there’s no doors on restrooms. Now, sometimes you see in a lot of airports, a staggered entry that you can’t see in. So that’s one way. Because now you don’t have touch surfaces. People aren’t touching doors or not kicking doors. So just thinking of when we look at a door and seeing those dirty hand marks on doors or on poles or where people’s feet kick. Now we don’t have all those unsightly marks. So already a perception is that that restroom is cleaner. But then we can get into no-touch-sinks. Sinks that turn on automatically. No touch soap dispensers. It dispenses the soap into our hand, usually with an air injected, so that, again, we’re not touching the dispensers, and they’re not dripping.

 

Ray

And it’s foam. Oftentimes, it’s ready to be sudzed-up.

 

Joel

No flush toilets and urinals. In some parts of the United States, there’s even urinals that are waterless because they’re in such a drought. And they’re not hooked up to plumbing other than on the exit, so there’s no water running. So, there’s all these technologies. There’s a lot of anti-microbial type coatings that can on to restroom latches, and there’s automatic toilet seat dispensers and things like that that are now being done as well. But one of the interesting things that is probably a newer technology, and a lot of people aren’t even aware of. There is now a hand dryer out there.

 

Ray

Okay, wait a minute. Now, I understand Joel and the air hand dryer is absolutely the no-fly zone. What is this?

 

Joel

Hey, sometimes you have to think outside the box.

 

Ray

The dryer box. (LOL) Now, Well, I remember talking with you before, and you are not a fan of hand dryers.

 

Joel

I am not a fan of hand dryers. Now, why is that? There’s a lot of white paper out there talking about how it blows the germs around, and there’s a toilet sneeze concept that’s out there that we’ll talk about someday. They create a lot of problems. So, there’s a gentleman right here in Rochester, New York, that I have known for nearly 40 years. He’s a former facilities manager. He also is an engineer by trade. And he has actually, designed a hand dryer that has, one, a HEPA filter in it. Hallelujah! Because on the intake, but even better, on the intake, when those turn on and you go to put your hands under them, it sucks the air in and it takes it through a UV core to kill everything that’s airborne. And then it filters it so that it pulls out all the nasty particles on top of it. And then you’re drying your hands with clean, refreshed air. They’re not going to be on the whole time. It’s not going to necessarily clean. But it’s also not going to add to the germs and the room. It’s going to decrease the germs in a bathroom.

 

Joel

And then there’s other no touch systems with paper towel dispensers where you wave your hand under and it will give you a piece of towel. There’s those. Rather than the cranks or the pushes or even the pulls. Sometimes that becomes unsightly. You’re expected to pull one towel and 50 fall out.

Ray

I understand the hygienic approach to the towel. Pulling it out, it’s contained in there, so it has some level of protection. But this really sounds like a huge step forward.

 

Joel

It is a huge step forward. And that’s one of the things I love about what I do, and even in the industry that I work in, is that there are so many new concepts out there, new technologies, new principles. And this one, looking at what I know, tells me that this is a very interesting device. And I’m excited to see it actually working and in places because it is a step in the right direction. Because we know that UV is going to eliminate a lot of those indoor pathogens that you can’t clean out of the air with normal cleaning processes.

 

Ray

Well, listen, if Mike can change your mind around hand dryers, this is got to be interesting. Thanks Joel.,

 

Joel

You’re welcome.

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