The Challenge
A 2015 study showed that on average we touch our faces 23 times/hour while awake, add to that the number of times we touch a door handle or other surfaces in between, it's no wonder that “New research shows that contamination of just a single doorknob can help spread germs throughout office buildings, hotels or health care facilities within hours.” This is also confirmed in an article by NPR which stated “When an infected person touches a surface, like a door handle, there's a risk they leave viruses stuck there that can live on for two to three days.” The same applies for other surfaces, including shopping carts as explained in this NBC report.
Other articles on this subject from respected sources:
Concern with high-touch surfaces remained in communities in Kuwait and beyond. Did any one notice the "Sanitizer-In-Chief" at President Biden's inauguration:
Unfortunately, many safety measure in response to COVID came with a significant environmental cost. The world has seen single use disposables usage soar.
Many have adopted new safety habits, like using single-use tissues (or other disposables) to open doors during the pandemic.
Some experts have offered advice to this effect, such as in this article in Consumer Reports “Grab a tissue. “Carry a pack of single-use tissues,” Hoffman says. “You can use these to open a door or grab a handrail.”
Predictably, we’ve seen a significant uptake in tissue consumption, as evidenced by this report stating that in the US alone there has been a 51.5% increase in facial tissue sales during the pandemic. To produce 1 ton of tissues 7 trees are cut down and 20,000 gallons of water contaminated. The world produces 21 Million tons/year of tissue, or 357 Million trees/year lost! In to the production emissions and consumer waste.
Community feedback highlighted that, after door handles, shopping carts were the amongst the highest surfaces of concern. In fact shopping cart handles have traditionally been a point of concern and studies have confirmed that they are the "germiest" surface at a grocery store according to the Today show.
To address consumer safety concerns, retailers in Kuwait and in other countries have adopted a system of wrapping shopping cart handles with single-use plastic wraps before every shopper (like the ones below)! Carts on average are used by 75-100 shoppers/day, resulting in each cart being wrapped 36,500 times a year. With even a small retailer with 100 carts that means over 3.5 Million wraps a year for a single store!
