When using detergents, water-based degreasers, disinfectants, or most other chemicals that can be diluted in water, it is generally a good idea to use the most concentrated product you can.
Where possible, we at Safic produce highly concentrated products
Well developed products do not become significantly more dangerous to handle when concentration is increased in this way, but some products do and this needs to be carefully evaluated before a decision is made.
We looked at two products: one that can be diluted at 1 in 10 for effective cleaning and a second product that can be diluted at 1 in 20 in order the clean equally effectively. In fact, in our study, product 1 diluted 1 in 10 and product 2 diluted 1 in 20 produced exactly the same ready-to-use product. Whether we started with product 1 or the more concentrated product 2, the diluted product actually was identical. Here, however, twice as much of product 1 is needed as compared to the more concentrated product 2. This results in the 3 following differences:
Double the product is being produced, here the production recovery cost doubles.
Double the packaging is required, therefore twice as much plastic is used.
The cost of transport effectively doubles and so do the effective emissions.
As product 1 already requires dilution, product 2 does not effectively incur extra dilution costs. Much of this is understood by users, but the effect of cost-saving is often not understood. We did a costing on both product 1 and product 2 using the same standard model for both and found a saving of over 30% if product 2 was used instead of product 1. In other words, we had exactly the same ready to use product but saved 30% if we used the more concentrated product 2 as the starting point. In an organization where R200 000.00 a year is spent on products, a saving of more than R60 000.00 can be achieved just by doubling the concentration of the product supplied. The environmental benefits are even greater than that at a 50% reduction in transport-related emissions and plastic consumption.