Changes to your washroom to help the environment

windmills

For businesses looking to save money and help protect the environment their washrooms are a great place to start. Reducing water and energy consumption in workplace toilet facilities can be effective in improving profit margins and meeting corporate responsibilities.

Low flow toilets and urinals

Businesses across the country are literally flushing their money down the toilet by using water inefficiently. For example, many companies simply use standard cistern flushing mechanisms that continually use water to wash away urine to combat bad smells. However, there are now solutions, such as Citron Hygiene’s Actiflow cartridge that use the latest microbiological science to kill the bad bacteria that creates the smell and break down uric salts that can lead to blockages.  The result is a massive reduction in the need to flush and if used in conjunction with a programmable flushing system, water consumption for urinals can be reduced by up to 90 percent.

Traditional toilets can also be adapted, so that the flush can be stopped at any point.

Citron Hygiene’s money saving calculator shows how implementing an effective flushing system can help reduce costs.

Motion-sensor taps

Around nine litres of water per minute can flow through the average tap, so even if left on for 15 seconds, that’s more than two litres of water wasted. As such, the days of the push, self-closing taps are numbered. These often run for some time after the user has finished washing their hands. Even with traditional turn taps, users can forget turn them off when they leave, wasting huge amounts of water and potentially causing an overflowing sink.

The alternative is for motion-sensor taps. These only run while the user is moving their hands underneath the tap, meaning that they provide right amount water for hand washing, reducing the amount of wasted water and the energy required to heat it.

Energy efficient hand driers

Paper towels, rolled fabric towels and inefficient hand driers are big washroom running costs for most businesses. Taking an example of a business washroom that has 150 hand dries each day, operating six days a week, a company could be spending almost £1,000 a year on roller towels. Even a traditional hot air hand drier will cost in the region of £400 annually.

However, moving away from roller towels across to more energy efficient hand driers, using the same example could save just under £800 per year. They are also great for the environment as they only consume 0.9KWh compared to 2.5KWh of traditional hand driers. Depending on how the electricity for powering these hand driers is generated, that could be a reduction of 1.5kg of CO2 produced for every hour of running, the equivalent of reducing a car journey by 10km (6miles). Discover the other benefits of energy efficient dryers in our complete guide to hand dryers. 

To find out how much your business could save on hand drying alone, check out our money saving calculator.

Change to energy efficient lighting

Changing halogen or florescent lighting to LED bulbs of equivalent brightness could see energy savings of up to 90 percent. The reason is that LEDs are far more efficient at converting electricity, measured in watts, into light, measured in lumens. As such, a typical 4-watt LED bulb produce light that is comparable in brightness to a 50-watt halogen.

Also worth considering are motion sensors for turning lights on when people enter a washroom and off again when they leave.

Washroom vent fans

Finally, if a washroom relies on a vent fan for ventilation, switching across to an energy-saving equivalent, could reduce electricity usage by 60 percent.

To discover ways in which your business can save money through efficient washroom solutions, request a free consultation with our hygiene experts today.  

Find out how we can help elevate your washroom experience. Talk to us.

Tick here if you are a current Citron customer
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.