Infection prevention and housekeeping teams in hospitals and other care settings tend to take a fairly traditional approach when it comes to the products they choose and use for surface cleaning and disinfection. But times are changing, with pressure from patients, regulators, and other stakeholders to improve sustainability. There are many ways to achieve this objective but choosing products with an alternative formulation can be one of the simplest.
NHS and Government guidelines and established practices generally require disinfectants for hard surfaces to contain chlorine as the active ingredient, usually as bleaches, when used on wards, clinical and surgical areas, and other critical settings. These are the traditional choice, widely used, and effective but there are some potential drawbacks in terms of surface compatibility and safety. Products tend to be supplied in simple formats such as powder sachets, tablets, or bulk liquids. These are added to water to prepare solutions in dilution bottles or buckets for use as disinfectants or cleaner-disinfectants. While some use relatively small amounts of packaging they offer few other sustainability benefits.
Despite the NHS Guidelines, subject to correct testing and implementation, it is possible to use alternative formulations in critical settings. Products containing AHP as the active ingredient, for example, offer a number of sustainability benefits on top of their fast-acting and broad-spectrum ability to disinfect against a wide range of pathogens commonly found in hospitals. Away from strictly regulated areas, the NHS guidelines are less prescriptive and this offers infection prevention and housekeeping teams even greater flexibility to choose alternatives. Many European countries already rely far less on chlorine within healthcare.
AHP is a patented blend of low levels of hydrogen peroxide and commonly used, safe ingredients which offers increased disinfection potency and cleaning performance. The hydrogen peroxide breaks down shortly after use into water and oxygen alone. This eliminates the risk of active ingredients or potentially harmful residues persisting in the environment and is one of the reasons why these products represent a sustainable alternative. Products can also generally be used on a wider range of surfaces, including wool and other fabrics, and with fewer precautions than chlorine-based formulations. They typically carry a lower safety classification than the conventional equivalent which can reduce ? and sometimes remove ? the need for staff to wear special PPE.
Many housekeeping teams have adopted products containing AHP as cleaner-disinfectants to combine these two critical steps into a single, safer, and faster process. These can all be seen as sustainability benefits that also reduce overall costs. This is possible because products containing AHP have been shown to meet numerous infection prevention standards in ?dirty conditions?. In other words, surfaces do not need to be cleaned before the disinfectant is applied. This is not always the case with traditional products which are often used in a two step ? cleaning followed by disinfection ? process.
Some hospitals have reported that they would like to recycle items such as furniture and curtains but this is impossible when they have been routinely cleaned with chlorine-based products. This is because the chemicals and residues that inevitably penetrate into wood and fabrics make these items unsuitable for recycling. Similar factors apply to mattresses that have undergone frequent disinfection. Items disinfected with alternative products, such as those containing AHP and other novel actives, present fewer restrictions. With organisations taking an increasingly holistic or cradle-to-grave view, considerations such as these will only become more commonplace.
Another approach with formulations is to employ products which offer strong sustainability credentials in the form of recognised independent certifications. There are many such systems: in the UK some of the best known are EU Ecolabel, Nordic Swan, and EU Flower. To qualify, products are assessed against a range of sustainability benchmarks and criteria that generally focus on ingredients, formulations, and packaging. Products that meet one or more of these certifications offer a simple way to enhance the sustainability of almost any cleaning operation.
But why stop there? Some certifications, such as those awarded by the Cradle-to-Cradle Products Innovation Institute, go further by taking the complete lifecycle of products into account. This includes assessing the provenance of raw materials and ingredients, the impact of manufacturing, supply chain, and usage, and the recyclability of packaging materials. Products, such as Diversey's SURE range, made entirely from plant-based by-products of agricultural or food production processes score highly in these assessments. Meeting this level is considered the ?gold standard? of sustainability accreditation.
Infection prevention and housekeeping teams have tried and tested regimes that are designed to deliver the highest standards of efficiency and patient safety. Prevailing regulations limit options in critical areas but away these switching formulations can offer a simple way to introduce enhanced sustainability. In many cases, with suitable support from manufacturers including appropriate training, it is possible to swap out existing products with little or no change to processes. That can make it a simple decision on its own but when products are introduced as ultra-concentrates with accurate dosing and dilution systems the additional sustainability benefits are even more compelling.