It’s not often a green technology comes along that’s an effective substitute for its less sustainable counterpart while also saving businesses money. Well there is one now and it’s called Toucan Eco, which replaces the synthetic cleaning chemicals used by commercial cleaners. And it does this with just water, salt and electricity. That’s it.
The main cost of using Toucan Eco is the capital expenditure however, once installed, the cost of producing the solution is virtually free as there aren’t any other ongoing consumables or hidden costs.
In this blog we’re going to focus on how to work out the ROI of Toucan Eco. This is based on examples that include how it’s saving Somerset House of London £3,000 each year, HOME of Manchester £1,200, cheese manufacturer JS Bailey of Cheshire £4,000, Perrigo’s pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Barnstaple £6,000, and the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines in Lympstone over £2,000 a year.
Step 1. Calculate 80% of your chemical spend
To start with you need to know the amount and type of cleaning chemicals used by your facility. This largely depends on the size of your site and the level of regular cleaning (how often and how intensive the cleaning is). After that it’s simple maths.
Calculate your monthly, quarterly or annual spend on chemicals and with Toucan Eco you will save at least 80% of this – it lets you make a multi-surface general cleaner and disinfectant but you will still need heavy degreasers and descalers. From our experience 80% is being conservative, but it does you a quick indication of expected savings.
Indirect costs and environmental impact
That’s not the complete story though. Hidden, or indirect costs, should also be considered too. These include the costs – and the environmental impact – of the manufacturing, transportation, storage and the disposal of chemicals.
The safer way to clean
Toucan Eco also removes much of the health and safety considerations associated with chemical cleaners. This includes COSHH training, updating of chemical certification and the need for PPE equipment.
And while we’re on this point, the feedback from cleaners is that they love using the solution as it’s safe and removes the dry, cracked hands so common among this profession.
Drastic on plastic
We also need to consider that it’s preventing you from using the single use plastic bottles that chemicals are delivered and often used in. These aren’t recycled as they often contain toxic chemicals so they often go straight to waste.
In fact, reducing plastic waste is such an important benefit of Toucan that some businesses have moved over to our cleaning system largely based on this is helping they’re business to go plastic free.
An example of Somerset House
Let’s take Somerset House of London. After adopting Toucan Eco, they found that it replaces nearly all cleaning chemicals and they’re now saving around £3,000 each year. It’s also helping to remove around 1,800 single use plastic bottles from their cleaning regime too.
“Before installing Toucan, we were ordering anywhere up to 150 bottles of cleaning agents per month, and these single-use bottles were disposed of after use,” said Susan Ryan, Incentive FM’s Head of Cleaning at Somerset House.
“We keep a small stock of descaling agent, but Toucan Eco has allowed us to drastically reduce the volume of cleaning chemicals we use, and with that we’ve made huge savings on our plastic waste.”
We have other examples Toucan Eco reviews.
Step 2. Choose the unit that suits your premises
For Toucan Eco, the cost is the capital investment required to purchase the unit (or units) that most suited to your site. These consist of the below.
| Per activation | Recommended for | |
| Toucan Eco III | 1l | Trial or small facilities |
| Toucan Eco Active | 10l | Small to medium facilities |
| Toucan Eco Active Plus | 20l | Medium to large facilities |
| Toucan Eco Flow | 350l | Large facilities |
The price for the models differs from a couple of hundred pounds to four figures. Facilities sometimes specify one device, while others several depending on the size and extent that cleaners have to move across the location.
And the ongoing costs?
Once installed, the cost of producing the solution is virtually free as it only uses water, salt and the electricity to power the electrochemical activation; that’s the science part behind our product which sets it apart, including from ozone-based systems.
To give you some idea on the ongoing spend, it takes about 1g of salt and tap water obviously to make a litre of eco-friendly, effective and safe disinfectant cleaner.
A 10kg bag of granular salt or salt tablets for softening water (either are fine to use) costs around £10. This will make in the region of 10,000 litres of the solution – or about 0.001p per litre.
Step 3. Work out the ROI of Toucan Eco
The ROI for users is working out at around 12 months – sometimes more and sometimes less – after which point chemical savings will have paid for the cost of the equipment.
That’s why Toucan Eco is one of those unique examples of when a green technology also has a short term pay back so it makes commercial sense.
Introducing innovation during cleaning contract periods
A final point to make is that when cleaning services are contracted out over a number of years, even when there’s only a couple of years left on the contract, companies are now realising that the move to Toucan Eco makes financial sense as the ROI is so short term.
But it’s more than just that. Toucan Eco also offers clients an innovative way to deliver cleaning services which supports the client’s carbon reduction schemes, along with a USP when it comes to retendering for the work.
Toucan Eco is now being used by more and more businesses as the greener way to clean workplaces – while saving money. If you would like to find out more information please get in touch.
