A Newly Emerging Market: Sanitation Tech

With COVID-19 having disrupted the entire world, there’s been much discussion on what the “new normal” might look like. As lockdown restrictions begin to lift in certain countries amidst surging COVID cases, people remain hesitant about whether it is safe to venture outside into public spaces. Even with precautions such as wearing masks and social distancing in place, it’s nearly impossible to know whether the surfaces or air around you are contaminated. From workplaces to airports to hospitals, many leaders have begun looking for more efficient, widespread methods of ensuring people’s safety in crowded spaces.

Introducing: sanitation tech! It’s almost a completely new industry that’s sprung out of the desperate need for solutions that could reduce contamination risks and reassure consumers as businesses reopen. Since it’s such a new market, there isn’t yet much data on the potential TAM, but we can expect to see that change as companies with the best solutions start leading the pack and secure long-term contracts with governments and businesses around the world. 

What exactly is sanitation tech?

There’s no “official” name for the industry – some refer to it as self-cleaning, others call it cleaning tech (which could easily be confused with cleantech, an entirely different entity). For the purposes of this article we’ll refer to it as sanitation tech, which encapsulates a diverse range of players, from startups creating futuristic cleaning portals to established tech companies repurposing their existing products to more efficiently distribute disinfectants. The industry has arisen in response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has posed the question of how exactly we can trust that the spaces we inhabit are safe. To re-establish trust with customers, businesses would need to constantly clean their facilities, a responsibility that is simply too costly when using a human staff. 

While as mentioned, there isn’t much data on sanitation tech specifically, the global industrial cleaning market size is projected to reach USD 58.2 billion by 2024 from USD 46.8 billion in 2019, at a CAGR of 4.5%. Increasingly stringent hygiene standards, along with the growth in the manufacturing and healthcare industries, are driving factors in the growth of this industry. Sanitation tech would be a subset of the global industrial cleaning market, an industry that is long overdue for disruption. The frequency of cleaning was always very high in healthcare, but it will definitely skyrocket in other areas that are usually overlooked such as public transportation and parks.

As individual measures for staying safe are relatively straightforward – washing hands thoroughly, wearing a mask, staying six feet apart – it’s likely that the market will contain mostly B2B startups. The main challenge lies in being able to sanitize large spaces frequently and quickly, while individuals’ homes and private spaces can be attended to with traditional cleaning tools and less frequency. Disinfecting large public spaces such as sports fields, public parks, and shopping malls is currently extremely costly and time-consuming, but new players we’ll explore in the next section have the potential to turn this problem on its head.

Startup Landscape

The market can best be segmented along:

1. UVC light – by far the most popular solution

2. Antibacterial coatings

3. Mass distribution

4. Human cleaning (for lack of a better term)

Ultraviolet Light

The most common method for killing viruses and bacteria is to use ultraviolet light. It’s an age-old solution dating back to the 19th century, used everywhere from the MBTA to water sanitizing plants. Given that using UVC is a pretty common solution, most of the innovation lies in the way this light is distributed and perfecting its intensity. Denmark-based UVD Robots builds wireless self-driving disinfection robots with 360-degree disinfection coverage, and it’s not the only one utilizing robots. Used in hospitals, the LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots, made by San Antonio-based Xenex Disinfection Services and costing about $100,000 each, emit broad-spectrum ultraviolet light to destroy viruses and bacteria within minutes. Direct exposure to general UV light is dangerous to human tissue, so, after set-up, the robots work alone, overnight in the public areas and also in each guest room after checkout. Lighting company Vital Vio offers "antimicrobial lights" that make exposed areas inhospitable for bacteria and microbes to grow, claiming that the product is even more efficient than deep cleaning.

Other companies tackle the air composition instead of solid surfaces. On June 8, Healthe Inc. landed $4.9 million in investment, bringing its fundraising total to $9.5 million since May 20. The firm develops and installs ultraviolet light systems that can fit in doorways, ceilings or air conditioning systems to sanitize air and surfaces. Molekule produces plug-in virus zappers, which use nanotechnology to destroy pollutants, including mold, viruses and bacteria. And resorts like Troutbeck in New York’s Hudson Valley have been upgrading HVAC systems with a new HEPA filtration system that includes UV light for extra germ-fighting.

Antibacterial Coatings

Another popular approach comes in the form of coatings for surfaces. Hungarian startup ReSysten produces a photocatalytic antibacterial coating for surfaces that offers up to a year of protection and is already in use in hospitals, on public transit systems, and in the Hungarian private sector. In terms of recent funding, Dutch startup LipoCoat just secured €1.5m in Series A funding to expedite the development of its bio-inspired and non-toxic coatings for infection control.

Mass Distribution

Why hire a massive cleaning staff when you can have drones do the same work in a fraction of the time? EagleHawk, a Buffalo, NY-based drone tech startup, is using disinfectant chemicals approved by the EPA and New York DEC to clean large public gathering areas, such as stadiums, arenas, and ballparks. Such areas will need to be disinfected on a regular basis for the public to feel comfortable attending events again, and common methods of disinfection, including using crews of people to clean and disinfect areas by hand, are time consuming and too costly to scale across large areas. Another creative solution comes from Advanced Pest Control in Brookfield, which has turned their fogging machines they normally used to disinfect after animal infestations into, what they call, "weapons against the coronavirus."

Human Cleaning

Startups aren’t just coming up with ways to clean surfaces – they’re also working on disinfecting humans before they enter crowded, high-risk spaces.

The Hong Kong airport is testing a "Clean Tech" booth that monitors temperature before a person enters for about 40 seconds as it sprays a light disinfectant, avoiding the face. It's meant to kill germs on the surface of the body. So far, it's only being tested on staff, but the HK airport authority said it will review using it for passengers.

Cleanse Portal, a doorway-shaped arch that emits far UVC light meant to inactivate pathogens like viruses on the body. The Florida company selling the portal, Healthe, said low exposure to the short waves of far UVC light is safe for humans and it is in the process of applying for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's already sold the device for office use, and we expect to see it quickly spread to every indoor space – maybe even including people’s homes. However as of now, the portal is designed for commercial, not residential use, and comes with a current price tag of $17,000. The company is looking at other, cheaper types of disinfecting units to spur the consumer to take the plunge.

Regulations and obstacles

As UVC light is incredibly dangerous to humans and most other disinfectant tools aren’t exactly ideal for humans to linger around, companies trying to introduce these solutions to the market face issues with regulatory systems, especially in the EU. Swedish company LifeClean offers a chlorine and alcohol-free disinfectant but has faced mounting red tape. SunCrafter (refer to above chart) has also faced similar issues in that its product is technically medically approved but not legally approved for use. However, startups in the sanitation tech space continue to go full steam ahead in developing these potentially life-saving products that will hopefully successfully navigate EU regulatory systems.

Is it a fad or here to stay? Final thoughts

While the urgency for such solutions may fade with the discovery of a vaccine, I’d argue that this industry is here to stay. COVID-19 has shocked the world into being more diligent about hygiene, and the pandemic has had devastating consequences both in terms of the economy and people’s health. A vaccine isn’t a cure-all, and no one knows when the next wave or disease may hit. And with such novel, creative solutions such as the cleanse portal that are safe for human use, I can see sanitation becoming a more hip, relevant market, especially as the technology is perfected and scaled down for individual consumers. In addition, the cleanse portal isn’t a COVID-19-specific technology – since UVC light is great at decontaminating viruses and bacteria, this tech could reshape the way we think about our health and prevent ourselves from catching more common illnesses such as the flu.

And putting actual cleanliness aside, businesses will have to work extra hard to regain consumers’ trust and get them to once again populate their stores, cruise ships, and restaurants. Tangible, technological solutions such as disinfectant robots and antibacterial coatings will expedite the process of easing consumers’ fears about frequenting their favorite spots. Despite all the negative consequences of COVID-19, the pandemic has made room for the explosion of a new industry that will change the way we think about hygiene and personal health.