industry news Reporting From ISSA/INTERCLEAN Amsterdam By: William R. Griffin T The largest gathering of cleaning profes-sionals in the world got underway on May 6, 2014, at the RAI Center in Amsterdam. Some 20,000 attendees from 135 coun-tries were expected to visit over 650 booths in five trades show halls over the three day event. I spent the first morning walking the show floor looking for interesting products and industry trends, and when my feet were sore and it was lunch time, I put together an overview of what I had seen so far: ● Walk behind and riding equipment is being designed with smoother flow-ing lines, brighter colors and easier-to-operate controls. ● Black toilet paper enters the market. ● Trash liners are getting thinner and stronger due to new polymer formula-tions. There is a growing concern about the number of plastic bags going into landfills and new compostable bags (although three times as costly as stan-dard bags) made with cornstarch are showing up on the market. ● Experts expect that source separation of trash and recyclables at building sites will continue to increase over the next 10 years and will become common-place and possibly mandatory. ● Floor pads are entering the market that are made from recycled pop bottles and contain a chemical that makes them biodegrade by 70 percent in less than one year in the landfill. Normal pads degrade less than 4 percent in one year. ● Another pad entering the market con-tains silver which gives it an antimi-crobial reduction of 99 percent over standard pads on the market. ● Autoscrubbers are getting smaller and more maneuverable making them suit-able for use in smaller, more confined spaces. ● Exhibit hall aisles sport a new cut and stick recyclable soft floor covering instead of carpeting. It looks and feels like vinyl, but is some type of paper composition material with a thin plastic wear layer on the surface. ● Companies exhibiting are partnering more with each other than in the past. ● Water treatment is a growing technol-ogy; at least 10 companies are showing systems of one kind or another for win-dow, solar panel, floorcare and carpet cleaning. ● There seem to be more orbital and cylindrical type floor machines on dis-play than I’ve seen before. ● China continues to grow in exhibition space and product type. I’d estimate that roughly 20 percent of the booths are from Chinese companies. ● The issue of recycling used floor machinery is growing. One company now offers this service and others are expected to enter the marketplace over the next few years. ● There are a lot of vapor cleaning machines of all sizes on display at this year’s show. Steam and Vac is a new term being promoted in a number of booths. ● The use of air hand dryers is growing, although there are many paper towels and dispensers on display. ● One company specializes in detect-able products for use in the food manufacturing industry. They add small particles to their plastic products (pens, brushes, gloves, tags, etc.) mak-ing these items detectable by mag-netic quality control systems in the ● Microfibers of every size, color and food manufacturing processes. description are on display in many booths. The next Amsterdam ISSA/INTERCLEAN show is scheduled for May 11-13, 2016. First MERS-CoV Case Reported In U.S. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that the first U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has been reported in Indiana, according to CNN. The patient traveled to Saudi Arabia to provide healthcare. The patient, an American male, trav-eled on April 24, 2014, from Riyadh to London, then to Chicago, and took a bus to Indiana. The patient was admitted to Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana, and has been isolated and is in stable condition. The CDC and the Indiana State Department of Health are conducting a joint investigation into the case, and passen-gers on the plane and bus will be contacted by the CDC as a precautionary measure. Rams’ Pick Worked As Stadium Janitor While he worked as a janitor at the Edward Jones Dome after St. Louis Rams games, Maurice Alexander also worked at keeping hope alive, The Washington Post reported. Alexander said that he would stand at the end of the field and just look at it. Alexander was kicked off the Utah State team for one season and sentenced to a year in jail after punching a teammate in the face after a party. The safety will savor trotting onto the For daily industry news, sign up for CM e-News Daily at www.CMMOnline.com/Sign-Up. Please send any news or press releases to Editor Phillip Lawless at [email protected]. 6 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® June 2014
CMM – Archives June 2014: 6
