Disruptive cleaning technology from EcoLogic Solutions

With just some water, salt and electricity, industrial customers of EcoLogic Solutions can make their own cleaning supplies. The system fits in the back room or utility closets and will cover the basic custodial needs of cleaning and disinfecting, said a spokesman for the Navy Yard company.

No ordering cleaning supplies from vendors. No deliveries. No boxes to break down and shove behind the dumpster. And a much lower environmental footprint. That’s the promise of the ECA Technology system that the company not only sells but custom fits to every industrial application.

Franz Wisner, a consultant with the company, walked us through its Navy Yard facility, which is expanding its operation to twice its current size, after a recent investment round.

While the company started making plant based, environmentally safe, non-toxic cleaning products for the commercial and industrial market, in the last few years the company has moved into what Wisner called “cannibalizing its own industry.” In other words, ECA systems give industrial clients the means to make their own cleaning solution and disinfectant, so they will stop ordering those supplies from EcoLogic Solutions.

With a starting price of $35,000, according to Wisner, you can see why they might like to be the ones to get the systems into the hands of the thousands of clients around the world that could use the system. Plus many clients take on a maintenance contract with the company, including buying the salt needed from the system. Wisner said they don’t have to buy salt from EcoLogic for it to work, though. As long as it’s good, pure salt, the system can make its cleaners.

Wisner said that, depending on the size of your operation, the system can pay for itself in as little as a year. Sometimes less.

The company has already secured a lot of ECA contracts from Whole Foods in the Northeast and Amtrak recently became a client. They see a big opportunity in cruise lines, too, as the system could save cruise lines dramatic amounts on storage and packaging inside the ship.

The system is about the size of a Manhattan apartment closet, but the company is also happy to custom fit it to a given workflow. So, for example, for an industrial dishwashing operation, like a big college dining hall, they could fit the system right into the washing machine, so one one ever has to add soap. It’s just built in.

They can also build other features into the system, such as monitors, variable strength, failsafes and etc.

Wisner said that a big motivation for Anselm Doering, founder and CEO of EcoLogic Solutions, was making a greener product. The two solutions the system creates by electrolizing brine are “eWater” (a sodium hydroxide solution) and “SANeWater” (a hypochlorous acid solution). Both solutions are 99.9% water. Technically Brooklyn checked the active ingredients out with the Environmental Working Group‘s Skin Deep online database of ingredients. It rates sodium hydroxide solutions on the low end of its moderate hazard scale. It rates hypochlorous acid on the low end of its low hazard range. EWG tends to be more conservative than government sources about the dangers of chemical ingredients. Its data for both substances is rated only as “fair,” however.

Hypochlorous acid is produced in small amounts in our own bodies as a part of our internal defense system against infection.

The company’s growth was recently featured on the BBC. Doering projects 70% growth in revenue this year in the piece:

While Technically Brooklyn was in the office, the company was fielding interest in its products from Singapore.

The company makes over 100 other products for sale through distributors to industrial and commercial clients, though it subcontracts out the mixing to other companies. Its east coast solutions are mixed in Ridgewood. EcoLogic does have a small facility for rush orders within its Navy Yard office. When you visit, many of the barrels where it keeps its solutions are kept open. Gallons and gallons of cleaning products, but you don’t notice that pungent, toxic smell that accompanies bleaches or other heavy industrial cleaners (this reporter has also had the title of “janitor” in the past). That’s the advantage of using all plant based, non-toxic products.

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