Changes have been massive across the cleaning and disinfecting industry in 2011, based upon technology that appears to have been invented in 2008, when the Tennant Company created a water processing technology R&D Magazine named one of the most significant inventions of 2008. (http://www.cleanlink.com/news/article/Tennant-Company-Wins-RampD-100-Award—10199)

Tennant develops and manufactures floor scrubbing machines, used to clean sports stadiums, commercial buildings, and large industrial spaces. Publicly traded as TNC on the New York Stock Exchange, Tennant is widely regarded as the best in that business.

Tennant’s highest-end machines are now offered with an option the company calls ECH2O, which allows the machines to clean floors with water and electricity, rather than with water and chemicals. (http://www.tennantco.com/solutions/innovations/ec-h2o-electrically-converted-water-technology/overview)

Tennant permitted a separate private company to be formed – Activeion, to create and manufacture a hand held version of this technology – a battery powered spray bottle, refillable with tapwater, and used for cleaning countertops, windows, and other non-floor surfaces (www.activeion.com). As users care more about germs on non-floor surfaces than they care about germs on floors, Activeion added a second technology – irreversible electroporation – to kill viruses, bacteria, and spores with electricity carried by the spray of water. (http://www.chemicalfree.tv/activeion-chemical-free-cleaning/how-it-works-electroporation/). The electroporation charge is very high voltage, but very low current, resulting in a spray of water that’s lethal to germs, but harmless to people and pets, who cannot even feel the electrical charge in the spray.

Due to the massively disruptive nature of the technology, Tennant Company formed a separate company, called Orbio Technologies, to license and commercial the technologies more widely. (www.orbiotechnologies.com)

Most recently, the Fortune 500 facilities service provider Aramark launched its Blue Cleaning program within its Higher Education division (http://www.aramark.com/PressRoom/PressReleases/ARAMARK-Blue-Cleaning.aspx)

The disruption in this industry, coupled with Senator Lautenberg’s proposed Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, has spawned Chemical Free TV (www.chemicalfree.tv), which covers the trend, and Chemical Free Kids (wwwchemicalfreekids.org), which sponsors photo and video contests.