Ever noticed the small battery operated air fresheners that you see mounted on walls in both public & commercial/office washrooms?

They are ok in a small space but they have serious limitations in larger areas.

• In the main, the limitations are that;
• They are expensive to operate (run on batteries which need replacing every couple of months)
• They use a small aerosol canister as the propellant for the deodorising spray (needs to be replaced monthly at least)
• They usually have a cheap, plastic, mechanical cam that pushes the top of the canister to dispense a burst of spray
• The range of the spray is limited
• They tend to just mask odours rather than destroying the bacteria
• They are only really as good as the person responsible for servicing the airfreshener unit. If the batteries and canister aren’t checked & changed regularly, then it’s a totally useless system.

At this years CleanScene held at Sydney’s Olympic Park, we came across the Bio Scent Ionizer which I would describe as an auto air freshener ‘on steroids’. It’s a really neat little unit that can be wall mounted near a 240 v power source. The beauty of this unit is that it works in two ways –

• It’s almost silent in its operation
• It deodorises large areas up to 50 sq m
• It has a fragrant, dry replaceable cartridge that is really easy to change
• It also has a negative ionizing function built into the electrical circuit. This is the key feature as the negative ions destroy allergens like dust, mould, spores and odour causing bacteria.

We’ve just installed our first unit in the washroom of one of our larger clients. This place gets hammered at certain times during the day with lots of staff & contractors on site. Early indications are that it should solve a few odour & air quality issues and hopefully reduce the overall cost associated with managing multiple air fresheners.

We’ll update the results of our trial in a month or so.