Category: News

After an incredible few days at the Australasian Gaming Expo, we’re excited to reflect on the valuable conversations we had with industry professionals.

It became clear that the gaming and hospitality sectors are facing a set of common challenges that are significantly impacting their operations and customer satisfaction. We’re proud to see how Advanced Bacterial Sciences (ABS) products are making a tangible difference in addressing these issues.

Common Industry Challenges

During the expo, several recurring pain points were highlighted by professionals across the industry:

1. Urinal Odours: Persistent and unpleasant smells in washrooms are a frequent complaint, negatively affecting the overall customer experience. This issue is more than just an inconvenience—it directly impacts guest satisfaction and the perception of the facility’s cleanliness.
2. Frequent Urinal Descaling – Acid Wash: Limescale build-up in urinals requires regular descaling with harsh chemicals. This process is not only time-consuming but also costly, requiring frequent maintenance to keep facilities running smoothly.
3. Foul Odours from Grease Traps: The accumulation of fats, oils, and grease (FOG) in kitchen grease traps leads to foul odours that can permeate throughout the facility. This not only creates an unpleasant environment but also increases the need for regular cleaning and maintenance.
4. Expensive Plumbing Call-Outs: Frequent blockages in urinals and grease traps result in costly plumbing call-outs. These issues can disrupt operations and lead to significant unplanned expenses, adding stress to facility managers.

How ABS Products Address These Issues

We were thrilled to see how well-received our solutions were at the expo, particularly for their innovative, non-chemical approach. Here’s how our products are helping to resolve these common challenges:

1. Safe and Easy to Use:
Our non-chemical products, such as URIZAP and FOGZAP, are designed to be both environmentally friendly and easy to apply. By reducing the reliance on harsh chemicals, facilities can maintain high standards of cleanliness with less effort and lower risk to staff and guests.

2. Water Savings:
By reducing the need for frequent flushes, our solutions contribute to significant water conservation. This is especially beneficial in regions prone to droughts, where water savings are critical. Our products not only help the environment but also reduce operational costs associated with water usage.

3. Enhanced Customer Experience:
With reduced odours, fragrance machines can work more effectively, creating a more pleasant environment for customers. A fresher, cleaner atmosphere enhances the overall experience, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Expanding the Impact: SludgeZap and All-Purpose Cleaner

In addition to URIZAP and FOGZAP, we introduced SludgeZap and our All-Purpose Cleaner, which garnered significant interest for their effectiveness in addressing other common facility issues:

1. Bar Flies:
Bar flies are a common nuisance in many hospitality venues, especially around bar areas. Our solutions help to mitigate this problem, ensuring that these spaces remain clean and inviting for guests.

2. Foul Odours from Sinks and Drains:
SludgeZap is particularly effective in tackling foul odours at their source. By keeping sinks and drains fresh and clean, it prevents the build-up of unpleasant smells, contributing to a more hygienic environment.

We’re very pleased with the positive response to our products and are committed to helping the gaming and hospitality industries overcome these persistent challenges. The feedback we received at the expo reaffirms our belief in the value of our solutions and drives us to continue innovating.

If you didn’t get a chance to visit us at the expo, it’s not too late to discover how ABS can revolutionise your facility’s maintenance routine. Contact us today to learn more about our products and how they can benefit your organisation.

Together, we can create cleaner, more sustainable environments that enhance customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs.

Across the hospitality industry, restaurants and catering companies have got ‘saving the planet’ at the top of their to-do lists. They’re making strides towards helping the environment and reducing energy costs by:

Switching to LED lights (the most energy-efficient lighting technology today) and timers (so lights are only on when needed).

Using paper straws and reusable coffee cups (single-use plastic straws and drink stirrers are banned in the UK).

Employing zero food waste policies to help reduce the amount of waste.

This is a great start, but there’s more to be done.

Whether your restaurants are award-winning or not, an unpleasant washroom experience with persistent urinal blockages and unpleasant odours isn’t what customers want to see (and smell). To make matters worse, a single blockage can shut down other urinals, causing significant disruptions until they’re resolved.

Cleaning is something we don’t always think about in terms of sustainability, but it plays a huge part. Restaurants typically rely on environmentally damaging chemicals, manual intervention, and costly ad-hoc rodding by external companies (which can mess with the pipes and cause hidden leaks).

Those were the only options… until now.

Blocked urinals with bad smells? Try URIZAP

When urinals get blocked or smell, harsh chemicals are usually used to try and fix them. It’s understandable because when you’ve got smelly washrooms, customers will think you’ve got bad hygiene in other areas. Smelly washrooms are a huge red flag in the hospitality industry and are your customers’ cue to never come back.

Instead of throwing harsh chemicals down the urinals – that can be toxic to both workers and the environment – try URIZAP. One scoop a week is all that’s required to maintain blockage-free and odourless urinals.

Don’t just take our word for it, this is how leading restaurant chain Hawksmoor enhanced their customer experience by using URIZAP.

“Our obsession with quality and ethics has always driven us to work with individuals and companies who share our beliefs. URIZAP reduces the need for harsh chemicals, is easy to administer, removes odours and costly repair services. We look forward to working with ABS in the future.”

– Patrick Urey, Hawksmoor Head of Operations

Need to reduce grease build-up and odours in grease traps? Try FOGZAP

Grease traps need to be emptied frequently, whether that’s by workers physically carrying them, or having them flow into grease wells that are piped onto trucks. Either way, the disposal process *smells*. It’s greasy, slippery and disgusting. Not to mention the logistical nightmare around how and where the truck is going to park and access the building.

Try FOGZAP instead. This powder-based solution is filled with bacteria that digest fats, oils, and greases, so grease traps can be emptied less frequently. That means a reduction in health and safety risks and a reduction in carbon emissions.

Blocked pipes from food waste? Try SLUDGEZAP

Bits of leftover food and oils on dishes ultimately end up down the drain, clumping together causing blockages and bad odours. To try and shift the blockages, harsh chemicals get thrown in… but they don’t always work (and they’re definitely not good for the environment).

Keep your pipes clear in a sustainable way with SLUDGEZAP. The friendly bacteria in this formulation can digest any organic matter that builds up in toilets, sinks and showers – that means anything with a drain.

For the ultimate washroom cleaning package: use SLUDGEZAP with URIZAP. URIZAP will tackle the urinals, while SLUDGEZAP will take on the sinks and toilets (it can even digest faeces).
For cleaning kitchens sustainably: pair SLUDGEZAP with FOGZAP to target grease traps and the fats and oils from food residue that pollute the water system (from sink drains upstream, to congealed blockage-causing lumps downstream).
What our products can do for you (and the planet)

• Our environmentally friendly, cost-effective cleaning solutions will help you:

• Eliminate the causes of odours.

• Reduce the pollution that ends up in sewerage systems.

• Reduce carbon emissions.

• Create safer working conditions (because they’re non-toxic to humans and animals).

Ready to take a seat at the sustainability table?

Save water and energy while cutting down on single-use plastic, carbon emissions, and environmentally unfriendly chemicals. It all starts with ABS.

Poorly maintained wastewater management systems can lead to blockages in the sewerage system (the infrastructure using sewers to collect and take rain and wastewater for treatment and disposal). This can result in untreated sewage water flowing out into the environment, causing widespread illnesses and serious infections.

As our population grows and the skyline is further littered with apartment buildings and skyscrapers, this increases the strain on the sewerage system. Businesses need to understand the factors that cause damage to our sewage water and how to mitigate these problems.

Some of the common culprits include:

Fatbergs
Waste from kitchens and bathrooms can lead to blockages called ‘fatbergs’ – these are masses formed by non-biodegradable solids that end up in the sewers, such as wet wipes (even if they’re labelled as ‘flushable’), and food waste deposits of fat, oils and grease. The higher the fat content in sewer waste, the more blockages. Wet wipes (and other solids) in the sewage block pumps in key parts of the sewers, causing strong odours and increased flooding.

Fatbergs form when the fluid in sewers reaches a rough surface or obstruction, causing a swirl of water to start trapping debris. These obstructions can be as seemingly insignificant as surplus cement drips, damaged brickwork, or tree roots, but the subsequent fatbergs cause lots of problems and are costly to resolve.
The lumps of congealed material can become as strong as concrete, requiring specialist equipment to remove them before untreated sewage spills out into the environment. The water company costs to fix these issues become tax payer costs.

Exposure to untreated sewage water is harmful, even in small amounts, because it contains high volumes of pathological bacteria and chemicals. This can cause symptoms including sore throats, skin and chest infections, gastroenteritis, and outbreaks of serious illnesses like hepatitis A and E. coli.

Organic waste blockages
Bits of fat and organic waste from washing dishes, and grease from grease traps that aren’t regularly maintained, can pollute the water system, leading to congealed blockage-causing lumps downstream. Merton Council says that of the average 200,000 sewer blockages a year, up to 75% are caused by fat, oils and grease. According to Southern Water, £90 million is spent on clearing fat, oil and grease blockages across the country every year.

Water waste
Uric acid scale is a by-product of urine that causes urinal blockages and unpleasant smells. Extra flushing is usually implemented to try and shift the blockages, but instead, the blockages and odours remain, and water gets unnecessarily wasted.
One client in particular tried to combat the odour issues in their onsite urinals by flushing them every 20 minutes, wasting around 790,000 litres of water per year. That’s the same as roughly 12 average-sized swimming pools.

What does that mean for you?
Almost all of the UK’s waterways are polluted. A House of Commons Committee report from 2022 stated that only 14% of UK rivers had a ‘good’ ecological status (meaning they’re safe to swim in). Surfers Against Sewage says that 55% of surveyed Brits who have tried wild swimming or sports in UK waters reported falling ill afterwards, on at least one occasion, because of sewage pollution.
Raw sewage is a threat to human health and wildlife as it contains harmful bacteria and viruses. It also promotes the growth of destructive algae blooms that starve rivers of oxygen, killing many species and disrupting delicate ecosystems.
While landspreading of sewage sludge is a way to improve soil health (as it provides a valuable source of nitrates, phosphates and other organic materials and the process saves millions of tonnes of human waste from being incinerated) current regulations don’t cover a number of contaminants that could be a potential risk to human health.

Professor Alistair Boxall, an environmental scientist at the University of York, said sewage sludge contains a mixture of things, including microplastics, persistent organic pollutants, metals, pharmaceuticals, and run-off from roads including rubber particles from tyres. He said, “We have no idea of how those work in combination to affect our health and also affect ecosystem health.”
That’s why it’s important for organisations to address their processes and make changes to improve waste management strategies. In order to reduce the amount of pollution in the sewerage system, we need to start by examining how we treat our water at the source.

What can you do about it?
There are a number of things businesses can do to improve waste management systems across bathrooms and kitchens:

The less water we use, the less wastewater is produced. Regularly check your drains for leaks and avoid wasteful washing habits, like excess flushing and leaving taps on. Using a product like URIZAP helps reduce the blockages and odours in urinals, and enables you to reduce flushing.

Be mindful of the cleaning products you use. Harsh cleaning chemicals mixing with human waste and food scraps can make wastewater more harmful. We have produced FOGZAP and SLUDGEZAP to deal with FOGs and organic waste in kitchen systems.

Manage your wastewater more sustainably by using technology to reuse wastewater (there’s even the possibility of turning it into energy).
By implementing these changes, your business can reduce the amount of pollution that ends up in the sewerage system, helping to reduce the burden from water companies and create safer drinking water.

Ready to make your waste management systems more sustainable?
Reduce waste, drive sustainability and reduce your impact on water pollution. Switch to ABS. Shop our sustainable range now.

We often think of strong chemicals as the best way to get our sinks, drains and toilets ‘properly’ clean. Especially when we’re dealing with strong odours.

But, cleaning products often contain harsh chemicals that cause severe side effects to people who spend hours exposed to them. The immediate and long-term health impacts are caused by inhalation and absorption and can vary from skin or eye irritation and burns to fertility issues, poisoning and, in extreme cases, death.

Some everyday cleaning products release chemicals called Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that pollute the air around us, which makes it almost impossible to avoid breathing them in while cleaning. This can lead to headaches, dizziness, vomiting and nosebleeds. Long-term exposure to VOCs can lead to chronic eye, nose and throat irritation, loss of coordination, damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system, and some cancers.
Using bleach every day can irritate your eyes and skin, leading to burns and eye damage.

Breathing in bleach over a long period of time can cause asthma (or worsen your symptoms if you’re already a sufferer). Bleach is also hazardous because it’s reactive, and when mixed with other cleaning chemicals can produce toxic gases, such as chlorine gas – when inhaled, it can cause symptoms ranging from chronic breathing problems to death.

What can you use instead of unsafe chemicals?
Bacterial solutions are safer than harsh chemicals, as there’s a reduced negative impact on health and non-toxic to aquatic life.

Our range of environmentally friendly, safe and cost-effective solutions remove the need to use bleach and other harsh chemicals to remove blockages, with regular use preventing the recurrence of issues. The ultimate washroom duo; URIZAP and SLUDGEZAP, remove odours and blockages impacting urinals, drains and toilets, while the combination of SLUDGEZAP and FOGZAP reduces FOG and organic waste impacting kitchen waste systems.

Ready to stop putting lives at risk for clean drains?

Cut out harsh chemicals and prevent negative health impacts. Start using our products to create a better experience for your customers and a safer working environment for your employees.

The usefulness and versatility of microorganisms has been seen throughout the ages, from the use of yeast in brewing and baking to the natural fermentation of pickles. These processes have been developed (at least initially) by harnessing natural activity of bacteria and fungi found in the environment.

All the bacteria found within a certain ecosystem or environmental niche is called microbiota. This word is often used interchangeably with the term ‘microbiome’ but there are subtle differences between the two.
Microbiome specifically refers to the genetic material contained within all the micro-organisms found within the niche, so can be attributed more to the potential functionalities found within that system. The term microbiota focusses on the organisms themselves that can be found within an ecological niche.

These terms are used interchangeably in media and literature, meaning you must rely on the context of the actual word itself to understand what is being said. This could be a little bit frustrating as you may have spent this time trying to find out the actual meaning of the words for it to not matter at all!
Jargon can and does mean a great deal, such as the differences between pre, pro and post-biotics. These terms all refer to methods for “beneficial ”bacteria to be of use. On the surface, they appear quite similar but each method has a very different way of harnessing the power of bacteria:

Pre-biotics: these function at the very start of a process. A particular nutrient is added to a bacterium within a particular niche. This addition fuels the bacterium, helping it grow, and giving it a competitive advantage over others found within the area. This allows it to expand its presence and, hopefully, increase the effect it has within its niche or environment.

Pro-biotics: these are the most well-known and popular of the three types. Pro-biotics are created by adding a certain bacterium to a location, so it performs a beneficial action. For example, our products mostly function in this way. URIZAP functions by introducing a particular proprietary bacterium to remove uric scale build-up alleviating blockages and foul odours in urinals.

Post-biotics: these are molecules or products produced by bacterial metabolism. These can include vitamins and various types of sugars. Currently, these are harder to come by, but they’re often found in naturally fermented products such as kombucha, pickles and yoghurt as by-products of the probiotic microbes used to make and found within them.
It’s incredible how just a few letters can completely change the nature and origin of the product that you are using. A simple pre-fix packs a lot of power, especially when dealing with bacteria. By understanding how these elements work to power bacteria, you can gain a better understanding of the efficacy of the bacterial products you use.

To unleash the power of bacteria in your business, shop our range.

In today’s business landscape, the intersection of cost savings and sustainability has become a focal point for organisations aiming to thrive in an eco-conscious world. Striking a balance between financial prudence and environmental responsibility is a consistent challenge.

Stakeholders, from investors to consumers and employees, are scrutinising organisations’ commitment to environmentally responsible practices. Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a strategic imperative that affects your brand, reputation, and long-term viability. ESG reporting is now becoming an industry standard.
Microbial solutions offer a novel approach to sustainability that goes beyond reducing waste and resource consumption. With so many options in the marketplace, understanding the science behind the cleaner alternatives and how they can deliver real-world sustainability benefits has never been more important.
Here’s how they make a significant impact:

Waste reduction

Facilities generate considerable waste, from washroom maintenance to food waste in restaurants, dining halls and canteens. Traditional waste and wastewater management practices can be both costly and environmentally damaging.
By adopting a microbial solution such as FOGZAP, facilities managers can significantly reduce the maintenance frequency of kitchen waste systems such as grease traps and pits, cutting both carbon emissions and disposal costs. This innovation minimises manual labour, freeing up resources and making waste management more efficient and cost-effective.

Energy and water efficiency
Urinals often contribute to high energy and water consumption, as frequent flushing is required to combat lingering urine odours and potential buildup. Unfortunately, this approach falls short, leading to the formation of stubborn uric acid and limescale deposits, resulting in blockages and unpleasant restroom odours.
URIZAP was specifically designed to tackle the root causes of these issues, alleviating the burden of costly resolutions and allowing businesses to cut down on flushing and harsh chemical use. By recommending a reduced flushing frequency of twice a day, businesses can not only save on utility costs but also shrink their carbon footprint.

Reduced use of toxic chemicals
Using harsh cleaning chemicals not only harms the environment but also poses health risks to both occupants and cleaning staff. Drain blockages are often initially treated with dangerous, toxic substances such as bleach and caustic soda, which can lead to severe burns, eye damage, and respiratory issues. These chemicals are highly toxic to aquatic life, and prolonged human exposure can cause chronic health impacts. Furthermore, they have the potential to corrode metals, causing infrastructure damage and costly repairs.
A product such as SLUDGEZAP is an ideal choice for environments with recurring drain issues, such as gym showers and kitchen sinks. It effectively breaks down organic build-up, including sludge and fatbergs, to eliminate blockages and odours with regular use preventing recurrence.

Reduced operational costs
Microbial solutions efficiently address waste challenges, preserving infrastructure integrity, conserving resources, and preventing costly repairs and replacements. Additionally, they streamline operations, allowing maintenance staff to focus on higher-priority tasks.
Curious about the financial and environmental benefits you could gain by switching to URIZAP? Try our sustainability calculator, and you might be pleasantly surprised!

Healthier work environment
The effects of harsh chemicals on people, especially cleaners and maintenance staff exposed to them daily, are well-documented and concerning.
Microbial solutions step in to protect employees, eliminating risks like skin irritation, respiratory issues, and poisoning. Making the switch to microbial solutions highlights the concern businesses have over employee well-being and the efforts they make to create a cleaner and safer workplace.

Reputation
Embracing sustainability strategies and demonstrating real progress can significantly boost organisational reputation, appealing to both consumers and investors alike. It showcases a commitment to environmental responsibility, cost savings, and the well-being of employees, rendering businesses more appealing as investment opportunities and preferred places to work.
By embracing these innovative solutions, you can enhance your organisation’s financial health while contributing to a more sustainable future.

Explore our range of microbial solutions.