While virtual and outdoor services have become regular staples during the last year of socially distanced interactions, the inability to meet in person within houses of worship has been difficult on congregations. Fortunately, increased cleaning and safety precautions, spearheaded by a new antimicrobial cleaning treatment, are driving a return to in-person services within churches and faith-based organizations, as congregations feel safer while meeting inside and in groups.

Providing Thorough Antimicrobial Care with MicrobeCare™

One of the most effective ways to combat disease-carrying organisms and allow groups to be able to meet in public while still feeling safe is by thoroughly cleaning and treating the surfaces where people interact. As members meet and interact, sharing spaces and worship materials, surfaces can quickly become cross-contaminated. Keeping track of every point of interaction and potential area can be difficult, particularly for churches with limited or primarily volunteer staff-members.

To provide peace of mind for congregations meeting in churches for services, community groups, and day-to-day activities, our unique antimicrobial solution can be used to coat common surfaces — such as pews, high-traffic hallways, and shared books. With the experienced team at Clean Technologies available 24/7, and because the treatment doesn’t require any pre-cleaning or additional preparation before being applied, all areas and points of concern can be treated with the antimicrobial care solution more quickly and thoroughly than traditional disinfection solutions.

Once applied, our treatment uses a mechanical mode of action to form a molecular bond with the surface, creating a durable barrier that guards against mold, mildew, fungus, and microbial pathogens. The unique application process remains effective for a longer period of time when compared to other applicators and chemical cleaners, providing protection to surfaces for six months and beyond.

A Safer Solution for Safer Services

It’s important to remember that churches serve the entire family — young and old, those in need, and members from all walks of life. Because of this, specific members of the congregation can potentially be more susceptible to certain pathogens and microbes than others, and special care should be taken to ensure they’re able to safely attend services without issue. This is also why it’s important to be mindful about which solutions are used to disinfect and protect shared spaces.

With chemical disinfectants, bacteria and microbes will be eliminated on surfaces immediately upon application, but exposure allows the surfaces to quickly become contaminated once more and leave residual chemical elements behind

These residual elements can be just as harmful, if not more, than the microbes and bacteria the cleaners are being employed to. Rather than putting the most vulnerable within the community at risk with harsh chemical cleaners, employing a safer antimicrobial protects surfaces providing a long lasting, less toxic solution.

Our treatment bonds to surfaces in as little as 15 minutes, without leaving behind residual aerosolized particles, and the solution is non-leaching, meaning it will not transfer from the applied surface to clothes, skin, or food. It works by forming a covalent bond with the surface it’s applied to and drawing in microbes using positively-charged nitrogen atoms and a linked carbon chain to rupture pathogens. This specific type of chemical bonding, combined with the unique application process, allows us to more effectively coat surfaces without producing potentially harmful residual elements.

Provide greater peace of mind for returning members of the congregation, with a more effective, long-lasting antimicrobial care solution. Reach out to today to see how Clean Technologies could help protect your church or place of worship from germs, mold, mildew, and bacteria. Visit our website, or contact Clean Technologies today!

At first, many celebrated working from home – rather than having to take the daily commute, workers have set up home offices. While there are benefits to this lifestyle, the level of communication between workers has stifled as it has moved from in-person communication to video calls and teleconferencing.

A year later, many companies are taking the first steps in moving back to office spaces. But doing this incurs risk of its own: how can companies convince workers to come back without reaching herd immunity? Is it worth it? What are the best strategies for keeping my employees safe?

MicrobeCare™ in the Office: Antimicrobial Solutions for Business Problems

Surfaces have long been known to carry dangerous microorganisms and spread illness throughout schools, offices, and restaurants. MicrobeCare™ is an EPA registered antimicrobial solution that has been successfully leveraged in healthcare to stop the spread of contaminants with minimal application needed. This same solution can be used in office spaces to build confidence in going back to work.

While special technology is required to apply MicrobeCare™ to an office, downtime is minimal. Employees can begin working as quickly as 15 minutes after surfaces have been coated, which has made it an ideal option for those working in facilities where operations may be running throughout the day and night. Using a MicrobeCare™ partner like Clean Technologies is the best way to approach this.

Why Apply Antimicrobial Solutions to Your Office?

According to Forbes, teleworking has decreased from 35% of workers to 21.2% of workers since the pandemic began. Even as COVID rates spiked towards the end of fall, workers continued to go back to the office, largely out of necessity. Not every industry can afford to be purely remote.

Bringing workers back into the office after a year spent at home can be a tough sell – antimicrobial solutions like MicrobeCare™ can not only convince them that you’re taking the best available measures to protect their health, but also improve their work performance.

Absenteeism

In the first days of the pandemic, many offices were still open while waiting for more information. During this period, absenteeism became a massive, if not anticipated, problem for business owners. Americans were preparing for the worst, and mitigating their risk by staying at home.

As offices begin to open, the same issue is likely to reemerge. While some offices are using a hybrid model to bring back their workforce, your company will have to build trust in order to convince employees to return. Antimicrobial care ensures that you are doing everything in your power to keep them safe as they return to the office, and can be used in tandem with other strategies to keep their morale high.

Presenteeism

An employee who spends all of their time in an office worrying about illness will be less attentive, efficient, and motivated. They will spend their time avoiding contact with others, and be more focused on avoiding others rather than meeting the bottom line.

This response isn’t a sign of a bad worker – it’s a sign of being human. Absenteeism and presenteeism go hand in hand. You’ll only be able to convince these workers that it is safe to return to the office when their fears have been acknowledged and responded to. Ensuring best practices are maintained in the office to promote health will ease the move back into office work.

Health and Wellness

Did you know that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the usage of common cleaners is four times higher than suggested?

Most of the germs that antibacterial chemicals remove are harmless to our health – when you overuse disinfectants beyond the guidelines, the cleaner can actually do more damage to your health than most common bacteria. While many common cleaners have shown to be effective against COVID-19, the overuse of these can lead to health problems, and the possibility of costly litigation.

In a recent study involving an ICU, MicrobeCare™ has been shown to be extremely effective in keeping surfaces clean over a long period of time. 95.5% of ICU surfaces that were coated with MicrobeCare™ tested culture-negative 6 weeks after treatment, and the surfaces that tested positive showed a radically decreased mean colony count compared to untreated surfaces. MicrobeCare™ only has to be applied occasionally, rather than consistently. It is non-toxic, and removes the need to frequently apply harsh disinfectants.

MicrobeCare™ Gives Businesses Peace of Mind

Antimicrobial cleaners can provide long-term health benefits over a long period of time – MicrobeCare™ is a simple solution that requires minimal application with maximum results.

In the era of the coronavirus, your business needs every tool in its arsenal to not only combat illness, but the mental stress that follows suit. Clean Technologies is a national provider with the equipment to quickly treat your office with MicrobeCare™ so your team can get back to work. Contact us today for more information about our services.

In a troubling development to many experts, business-owners may be cleaning their offices too frequently. The notion may seem preposterous to some, particularly considering the year-long battle with the novel coronavirus, but the old adage does seem to hold true in this case: there can be too much of a good thing. 

How Often is Too Often for Disinfecting my Office?

Near the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, it was common for businesses and offices to do a thorough deep-clean every few hours as a precaution, some as often as 6–8 times a day, according to Bloomberg. Time and further research into the spread of the virus and the virus composition has led to cleaning cycles that are less frequent, and more subjective.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), high-use spots, such as door handles, light switches, desks, phones, and faucets, should all be cleaned and disinfected more frequently, but the approximate amount is up to individual businesses. In general, for most offices, all high-use spots should be cleaned at least daily. For unoccupied spaces that see more low usage, the CDC recommends they be cleaned at least once a week. This is because the COVID-19 virus does not have an extended lifespan on surfaces, lasting anywhere from a few hours to a day, with warm weather and exposure to sunlight shorting that lifespan even further.

Why is Cleaning Frequently a Bad Thing?

As mentioned, frequent cleaning is being performed to help safeguard employees, customers, and the public from the spread of germs and bacteria — so what makes disinfecting an office so often bad?

The reason frequent cleaning is frowned upon has as much to do with the products being utilized as it does with the spread of the diseases and germs being targeted. While there are several products on the market that claim to be effective disinfectants, many of the products currently being used in offices have not been fully cleared as being safe in relation to human health. This is primarily due to a lack of thorough research on the chemicals being employed, though there have been a number of limited studies that have shown some of the chemicals used can have particularly dangerous side effects on animal test subjects.

Increasing the frequency with which these chemical disinfectants are spread on the most common surfaces within an office could lead to major health concerns for the same employees business-owners are trying to protect. Yet, the surfaces do need to be cleaned to help reduce the potential spread of additional bacteria and pathogens. So what choice do businesses have to turn to when considering how best to keep their employees safe when returning to work?

A Non-Toxic, More Effective Cleaning Agent for Disinfecting Your Office

One alternative is a cleaning agent that lasts longer, and works differently, to provide a more effective level of disinfection — MicrobeCare™. Other cleaning agents are generally aerosolized using electrostatic sprayers, to speed up the distribution of the agents, but causing potential respiratory issues in addition to the side effects of the cleaning agents themselves. MicrobeCare™ uses a unique application process that works by bonding directly to the surface the treatment is applied to through a mechanical mode of action, allowing the treatment’s molecules to link with the adjacent molecules, coating the surface and forming a barrier on the treated surface. Once this barrier is formed, MicrobeCare™ draws in microbes with positively-charged nitrogen, and ruptures the pathogens with a long carbon chain.

Because of the specific type of bonding MicrobeCare™ is able to achieve with the treated surface, the treatment is able to remain effective for longer periods of time, leading to less frequent applications — once every six months, rather than every few hours or days for other antimicrobial solutions.

This provides greater peace of mind to businesses and employees as they are able to go about their work without being exposed to potentially harmful disinfects on a frequent, disruptive schedule. Instead, employees are able to interact with surfaces they know have been treated, and are able maintain their efficacy, without feeling exposed to chemical antimicrobial disinfectants, as MicrobeCare™ is non-leaching, and will not transfer from surfaces to clothes, food, or skin.

Reduce the frequency and increase the effectiveness of office disinfection without risking greater exposure or gambling with employee health. Reach out to Clean Technologies today to see how their MicrobeCare™ could help protect your workplace from germs, mold, mildew, and bacteria. Visit our website, or contact Clean Technologies today!