How to evaluate the cost Hand Soap if your Office.
Calculating the cost of the hand soap used in your office, business or organization is probably not
something you get around to very often. Perhaps you have never even considered the costs
involved. This is understandable for what is, let’s face it, not an incredibly exciting task.
But as the well-worn maxim goes, every little bit helps. What can, at first, appear to be
minor, insignificant costs to your business can, over time, mount up. If you fail to take into
account issues such as the cost of hand soap for your business or organization, it can lead to
unnecessary costs down the track. These costs are all too avoidable, yet overlook them and it
can be a real problem for the bottom line of your business.
Having a properly constituted hand soap program for your office, building or facility can help reduce the
spread of germs and illness. It is also important to understand what you are paying for.
With all of the different brands, models and dispensers available, trying to figure out what is
the best value for your business can be confusing.
By taking time to evaluate the cost per hand wash, you can have a starting point to understand
the real cost of a soap program. Every hand soap system works a little differently, but
breaking it down to the cost per hand wash will give you a way to compare them fairly.
Not only the cost, but also the number of hand washes in a refill is important too. Having
more hand washes in a refill will reduce the time spent changing them out.
Here are some simple steps to follow when calculating the overall cost of hand soap in your office,
business or organisation:
1. To begin our example, let us first calculate the amount of soap that will be required
for each refill. This will most often be in millilitres. In our example, let’s make this
1000ml.
2. Once you have calculated the millilitre value of each refill, you should then work out
how much soap is dispensed each time a person presses the soap dispenser. For the
purposes of our example, let’s make this 0.07ml.
3. Next, we divide the value of the soap refill by the amount of soap that is dispensed on
each press. In our scenario this calculation would be 1000 ml./0.07 ml. = 1429 pumps/
refill. Remember though that many soap dispensing systems can be adjusted in order
to increase or reduce the amount of soap that is released each time a member of the
public presses it. Get in touch with the manufacturer to find out if this is possible.
This can be a simple but often overlooked way of saving money for your facility.
4. When you take into account that the typical user will push a manual dispenser twice,
you need to divide the number of pushes per refill by two. For example, 1429 pumps
per refill/2 pumps per hand wash = 714.5 hand washes per refill.
5. Finally, divide the number of hand washes per refill by the cost of the refill. For
example, refill cost $20/1429 = $.028 per hand wash.
Just by following these five simple steps, you can assign your hand soap budget according to
real figures as opposed to relying on guesswork. You may be surprised by just how much you
can save.