Improving Aster Bio's Floor Cleaner - creating a better, safer cleaner

Many years ago, I worked on a project to develop a microbial based floor cleaner for use in maintaining kitchen/bar area floors. If you have ever worked in a commercial kitchen, you know about the slip hazards and difficulty in removing "stains" from the grout. Both problems are related to fatty acids/grease forming a water resistant film that most cleaners have problems with cleaning. In addition, grease residuals in floor drains can contribute to blockages and increased numbers of insect pests (drain flies, etc).

Well over the past year, I noticed a number of companies selling microbial based floor cleaners that were similar to what my team developed in the 1990s. In the intervening 20 years, microbial technologies have improved with greater understanding of biosurfactants and enzymes. So in 2015, my team at Aster Bio began to redesign the Floor Cleaner product to reflect R&D lab advances (seen in our industrial waste treatment products).
The new formulation was build on a Aster Bio's core strengths of microbes, enzymes, and biosurfactants. Here is what we came up with:

• We discovered wast the "best" microbial count for performance - 200 - 300 million CFU/ml. Any lower concentration is too diluted for the retention time/temperature in the drain lines.
• Free enzymes - adding protease, lipase, urease, and amylase increased cleaning efficiency without adding potentially toxic or hazardous chemicals. Best of all this let us keep the pH at a level that is non-irritating to employees or customers.
• Combining natural microbial biosurfactants (lowest toxicity to the environment) and readily biodegradable, clean rinsing chemical surfactants created a the immediate cleaning needed in a floor cleaner. The cleaner quickly mobilizes dirt for effective immediate cleaning.

Since we believe that safe, more effective cleaners are a key part of our improving the environment core focus, Aster Bio will begin working with partners to get this product to restaurants and commercial kitchens. The benefits from the new formulation are:

• Reduced slip hazards kitchens (better grease/fatty acid removal equals less slippery floors)
• Fewer problems with drain flies and other insect pests attracted by waste in floor drains
• Help maintain free flowing floor drains (reduce emergency plumber call outs)
• Control mystery odors - deep cleaning by enzymes/microbes controls odors without the need for masking agents
• Safe for employees and customers - with no harsh acids or bases, Aster Bio's product will not harm humans that handle or come into contact with the concentrated or diluted product
• Saves money - Aster Bio's highly concentrated formula can be used once daily to deep clean floors. Given a low dose product with multiple benefits, users will find overall cleaning/maintenance/pest control costs decrease when using Aster Bio's biobased, safe floor cleaner.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, we took a flyboard picture before and after using the floor cleaner for 2 weeks. The top is before using Aster Bio's floor cleaner. The bottom is after two weeks of using Aster Bio's product. The boards were installed 7 days before taking photos.