‘Clients want us to clean the air’: How the pandemic took hygiene to a whole new level The past year has turbo-charged our relationship with cleanliness, raising expectations and turning many into germophobes. Has it gone too far?
By Jess Cartner-Morley / The Guardian
Before Lynsey Crombie sits on a train, or outside a cafe, she takes out her antibacterial wipes and cleans the table, the arms of her seat anywhere she might touch or put her cellphone down.
“I’ve always done it,” said the bestselling author of The 15-Minute Clean and How To Clean Your House And Tidy Up Your Life. “Until last year I used to get some funny looks.”
The company says its handle sanitisers help reduce consumers’ ”fear and hesitation” about visiting shops
Government-funded Innovate UK has awarded a £90,000 grant to a Chesterfield startup 99point9 Hygiene, to develop an automatic supermarket trolley handle sanitiser.
The non-departmental public body, part of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s UK Research and Innovation group, is backing the startup so a product can be brought to market at the start of next year.
99point9 already produces a small unit that can be fixed on to doors, to spray handles with disinfectant after use.
The funding will be used for research & development, to create a similar product that can “achieve total coverage on any type of trolley handle”.
By George Nott2020-12-30T11:35:00+00:00
The coronavirus pandemic has demanded solutions to new problems, and ones that can be applied swiftly. Supermarkets have turned to technology to solve a multitude of Covid induced issues in 2020, testing and adopting tech faster than ever before. Here are some of the notable new technologies that have become part of the ‘new normal’ shopping experience.
Queueing
With a limit on the number of customers that can safely shop in store at any one time, queueing has become inevitable at busy times. But tech has helped ease the inconvenience.
Several supermarkets introduced virtual queueing systems, so customers can line up to enter stores from the warmth of their cars.