How Better Hand Cleaning Helps Create a Safer, More Productive Workplace

If you’ve ever walked into a restaurant bathroom, you’ve probably seen signs reminding employees to wash their hands before returning to work.

It’s good advice for people in metalworking shops and manufacturing facilities, too.

Not only does the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognize good hygiene as a key to workplace safety, requiring lavatories and handwashing stations at job sites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says handwashing is an effective way to keep employees healthy, lowering the number of people who get diarrhea by as much as 40 percent and curbing respiratory illnesses like colds by as much as 21 percent¹.

That underscores the productivity benefits of on-the-job cleanliness, which can be optimized with hygienic equipment such as Georgia-Pacific Professional’s sealed soap and sanitizer systems, including its enMotion^® dispenser line as well as a hand cleanser containing powerful scrubbing agents to remove heavy grime.

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The dispensers use sealed refill bottles that are discarded once they are empty, explains Whitney Shaw, the company’s senior category manager for skin care. Simply replace the bottle when refilling is needed.

That helps minimize the risk of soap contamination, which can happen with traditional bulk dispensers.

“People sometimes think, ‘It’s soap. How can it become contaminated?’” Shaw says. Unfortunately, these refillable, bulk soap dispenser systems pose public health risks, and the CDC advises against them because “topping off” of the refill can lead to bacterial contamination of soap, she says.  

Another benefit is that each refill bottle comes with a new pump. Bulk dispensers rely on permanent valves or release mechanisms that grow less sanitary over time as recommended cleaning procedures can be labor-intensive. Since contaminated soap may not be washed off, bacteria from that soap can be transmitted to workers and make them sick.

Another maintenance consideration for bulk-refill systems is that refilling them can lead to spills and drips on the floor, creating slip-and-fall hazards.

Touch-Free vs. Manual Dispensers

While touch-free systems are the most common soap and sanitizer dispenser format in the market today, due to their lower risk of cross-contamination and the potential for reducing waste by dispensing controlled amounts, manual dispensers remain in use.

Georgia-Pacific Professional, which expects the market for touch-free dispenser formats to keep growing, offers them for industrial grit hand soap as well as foaming hand soap and sanitizer.

Footnotes

1.  https://www.cdc.gov/clean-hands/prevention/about-hand-hygiene-at-work.html (Use of these materials, including any links to the websites, does not imply any relationship, affiliation or endorsement by the CDC.)

2. GP PRO, 2020, Industrial Segment: Hygiene Ready | Instill Confidence Among Valued Workers, [Brochure], Georgia-Pacific.