By Steve Hubrecht
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Cleanliness has been at the top of many Columbia Valley residents’ minds ever since the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life in mid-March. The pandemic has been rough on many local businesses, has been a boom to a few, and has even resulted in one brand-new one, launching here in the valley.
Cleanse Wise, a Radium Hot Springs-based company, started off this summer selling electrostatic sprayers and has recently expanded into selling disinfectants, cleaning chemicals, personal protective equipment, and janitorial cleaning supplies.
“It was an idea when COVID-19 hit,” Cleanse Wise co-owner Erin Palashniuk told the Pioneer. She and another fellow Cleanse Wise co-owner, Tyler McCauley, both operate accommodation business (Palashniuk owns the Gateway motel, McCauley the Inn on Canyon) and Dennis Allen, (Cleanse Wise’s third co-owner), had been working with the group, and various industries, in providing operating procedures and action plans for the new requirements for COVID-19 workplace and public safety, and trying to figure out more effective ways to disinfect the rooms in their inns during the pandemic, when they happened upon electrostatic sprayers and approved disinfection and sanitizing solutions.
Electrostatic spray systems come available as handheld guns (which look much like handheld water pistols) or larger volume backpack units. The units have reservoirs that are filled with disinfectant liquid. The units are battery operated and when triggered, emit an electrically charged mist that is discharged and propelled to cover areas of potential contamination. The positively charged particles in the spray will cling to, coat, and wrap-around any surface they are ‘shot’ at, creating a uniform coating of sanitizer and disinfectant on sprayed objects. The systems are particularly effective for cleaning hard-to-reach areas that manual disinfection action can easily miss.
“When they spray, it makes a mist. It doesn’t spread the virus around, as some other propellant aerosol cleaning solutions might,” said Palashniuk. “There’s much better coverage and it uses much less chemicals, so your cost of cleaning actually is reduced.” This electrical particle attachment of disinfection solutions, on all contacted areas, assures a complete (99.9 per cent) kill of viruses, bacteria, and other potentially harmful contaminants.
Electrostatic sprayers can be used not only in residential homes and hotels, but also in classrooms, public washrooms, cafeterias, commercial kitchens, equipment rooms, offices, waiting rooms, pools, fitness centres, spas and saunas, banquet halls, medical and dental facilities, care facilities, daycares, transport vehicles, workplace meeting areas, lobbies, and elevators.
Initially, Cleanse Wise was offering electrostatic spraying services to other Columbia Valley businesses. Uptake on that was a bit slow, but Palashniuk, McCauley and Allen found there was demand from many local businesses and support service groups to purchase the devices, and so switched to supplying them. A few months later, they began offering janitorial and custodial supplies. Cleanse Wise is affiliated with major suppliers and national distributors, along with a warehouse distribution network serving the Rocky Mountain area, the Kootenay region and almost all of Western British Columbia.
“The response has been quite positive so far,” said Palashniuk, adding “the cleaning chemicals Cleanse Wise sells are hospital-grade but are nontoxic and as environmentally friendly as possible. There is a newfound normal for disinfection, sanitizing and cleaning in our world today, and the Cleanse Wise logo of ‘We care for Your Space’, is truly about our customers and the value they bring to this world we now have to guard to live in.”
The personal protective equipment Cleanse Wise offers includes gloves, masks, goggles, gowns and more. The cleaning supplies include paper towels, trigger sprayers and bottles, general purpose cleaners, disinfecting wipes, cleaning sponges and more. To find out more, visit the Cleanse Wise Columbia Valley Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CleanseWiseColumbiaValley or call 250-341-5873.
