Post-pandemic businesses and organizations are taking cleanliness and sanitation seriously. There are many different ways that you can increase sanitation at your business and cut down on the spread of germs and viruses. Considering the fact that 80% of illness-causing germs are spread by hand, it makes sense to incorporate sanitary products such as hand wipes and hand sanitizer. Let’s learn more about these sanitation options.

Hand Wipes

Hand wipes are an effective way to clean hands without traditional handwashing at a sink. If your place of business doesn’t provide sink or bathroom facilities, then hand wipes can be a good alternative. For sanitizing wipes to be effective, though, it’s important to take note of the active ingredients in the product. Wipes should have alcohol listed as an active ingredient. These products work by destabilizing the cells of viruses and bacteria. This destroys the cells and makes them inactive. However, the percentage of alcohol matters too. The percentage should be greater than 60%. You should look for wipes that contain ethanol or propanol to be the most effective.

Wipes are the best option when running water is not available for regular handwashing. Regular handwashing with soap and water is still considered to be the best way to kill germs and bacteria from the hands. However, this is not always possible, and you should have a backup plan. Make sure that if wipes are available at your place of business you make them easily accessible. If people must handle the wipe container a great deal, they are simply exposing themselves to even more germs.

Hand Sanitizer

The other option when running water and regular handwashing isn’t an option would be hand sanitizer. There are some benefits to this option as well. Using sanitizer doesn’t create trash to throw away with every use in the way that hand wipes do.

For hand sanitizer to be effective it will need to have 60% to 95% alcohol as ethanol or isopropanol. This will give you the greatest germ-fighting strength. You should be aware that there are a lot of hand-sanitizing products on the market that do not adhere to this proportion of germ-fighting ingredients. You will need to check the ingredients and the proportion for yourself. There are ingredients that are approved by the FDA for sanitizing but are not as effective. Watch out for benzalkonium as it is not as effective. Hand sanitizer is best for times when you can’t wash your hands with soap and running water.

Hand wipes or hand sanitizer should always be available in your workplace to help customers and employees fight germs.