Sustainability as standard when you specify with Ideal Standard and Armitage Shanks

By Anil Madan, Non-Residential Marketing Manager at Armitage Shanks and Ideal Standard International

Catering to both hygiene and sustainability concerns in commercial washrooms can be a difficult task, particularly as these are areas which often seem to pull in different directions when it comes to questions around efficiency and water usage. With rising end-user expectations around aesthetics another increasingly important factor to consider, facilities managers can often feel as though they have an uphill battle to climb. Innovatively designed fittings featuring the latest technology, however, provide a solution to creating washrooms that are both cleaner and greener.

Hygiene helps

Hygiene is a non-negotiable in any washroom, but this needn’t lead to a space that uses excessive water or cleaning products. WCs and urinals optimised to be cleaned with less water allow facilities managers to maintain necessary hygiene standards without sacrificing on water efficiency.

Urinals in particular offer an opportunity for economies of scale when it comes to water efficiency. In large-scale commercial environments, such as stadiums and concert venues, where washrooms receive a high footfall of visitors, the impact of a urinal that saves even a little water is multiplied over thousands of visits. For example, the hybrid flush system on Armitage Shanks’s Sphero urinal measures salinity and water use, so the flush is activated only when it’s needed, saving up to 50,000l of water per year.

Sphero’s innovative shape has also been created to provide the most hygienic experience for users, while still retaining impressive aesthetics. Rimless design removes a hiding place for bacteria and makes life easier for maintenance teams when it comes to cleaning. Sphero is just one example of the ingenious products that are available for commercial washrooms and deliver the effortless style and faultless hygiene that users demand.

Mighty mixers

Washroom mixers are another area where clever design makes it easy to put sustainability and hygiene first. A heightened awareness of hygiene often causes people to use more water or soap than is necessary, hampering facilities managers’ efforts to make their washrooms as economical as possible.

Smart washroom mixers, such as Intellimix® from Ideal Standard, dispense the perfect quantity of soap and water every time, controlled by a companion app. This puts the power to save water directly in the hands of facilities managers, while still ensuring a hygienic experience for users. In fact, soap use can be reduced by up to 80% and water savings by up to 85%, making the washroom the star player in a sustainable commercial space.

Room to manoeuvre

When finding the right balance of hygiene and sustainability, there’s no one solution that will work for everyone, and you’ll often need to find your own route through all the different products available. To do this successfully, you need to know that you won’t run into any problems of compatibility when it comes to combining different products and collections.

Ideal Standard and Armitage Shanks’s Singular™ philosophy means this is never a problem. Singular™ guarantees compatibility across the whole product portfolio, ensuring that designs will always fit together, and providing a ‘one-stop-shop’ for facilities managers when it comes to upgrading or replacing a product. Take a look at Ideal Standard’s Singular Sector Book on offices and public spaces to see how different designs can take shape and different collectors fit together.

Sustainability as standard

Higher standards of hygiene and tighter sustainability requirements are undoubtedly here to stay, and they can go hand in hand in washrooms designed for sustainable commercial spaces. Ideal Standard and Armitage Shanks’s most innovative solutions deliver superior hygiene and water economy, with no compromise on user experience.

To find out more about the full offering for commercial washrooms, visit: www.idealspec.co.uk/hygiene-redefined.html