Tech Talk - Cost Savings with microfiber

by Candi Bezte, Norwex Science & Technical Advisor

North Americans may finally be catching on!

We've all known about the amazing benefits of microfiber cleaning for awhile - hospitals in Sweden and Finland have been using our products, or products very similar to ours for over a decade, yet, North Americans always seem to feel the need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to many environmental innovations.

This spring, the following article appeared in the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society Journal (volume 29, Issue 3, author Shelagh Damas) "Fighting Costs and Bacteria with Microfibre Cleaning." The article discussed how in the past "couple" of years a number of hospital facilities have switched to microfiber cleaning methods with the following results: The University of California Davis Medical Centre found a 60% decrease in lifetime cost savings for mops, a 95% reduction in chemical costs associated with mopping, and a 20% decrease in labour costs when they switched to a microfiber mopping system; Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC found significant savings in energy; The University of Massachusetts Sustainable Hospital Project noted decreased water, sewer, and chemical costs and found that the microfiber mops lasted 10 times longer than their traditional loop mops; and even more importantly, St. Jerome Hospital in Quebec was able to control their previously high levels of Clostridium difficile. Eight weeks after changing to microfiber cleaning methods, the number of infections dropped from 39 to 6, and over a year there was a 76% decrease in C. difficile infections in this facility.

The problem with C. difficile is that it forms resistant spores and so is difficult to kill - of course - WE know that removing is always the way to go ... and the microfiber was simply able to remove the spores from the surface, thereby dramatically reducing infection rates