A Complete Guide To Odor Control In Commercial Environments

Many business owners don’t realize that odor removal is just as much of an art form as fragrance creation. The opposite of a bad odor is not a pleasant one. It is rather, the scent of nothingness of air. The goal of scent removal is the neutralization of the offending odor.

In its own non-legal way, it’s like being guilty or not guilty based upon a preponderance of the evidence, and in this case the culprit is a nasty, unwanted smell.

Bad odors, which translate into lost business, can die a painless but definite death and never come back to life. Consider this sort of how-to article a guide for saving your business, your clients and your poor nose.

Poor Restaurant Odor Control Can Ruin A Good Experience

By way of example, have you ever dined at a nice restaurant only to be completely turned off by the appearance and odors in the bathroom?  It happens more often than you think, and as a restaurant owner, you can alter a customer’s loyalty to and impression of your establishment as quickly as a fallen soufflé can question a chef’s culinary talents.

Restaurant Odor Control Products

No matter how good the food or service may be, a new survey commissioned by Cintas Corporation and conducted by Harris Poll indicated that 97% of American adults would be influenced to not return to a restaurant if they experienced some type of issue related to the restroom facility.

According to John Engel, Senior Marketing Manager of Cintas: “Even with a master chef in the kitchen, a dirty restroom or unattractive entryway can leave a bad taste in a diner’s mouth… Repeat business is vital to the success of any restaurant. Restaurant managers must ensure that their employees will address facility flaws to keep diners returning.”

Roger Ford, director of operations of Team MJV in Lafayette, Indiana had this to say about odor control in restrooms: “People like to walk into a restroom and smell a nice, clean fragrance. If you have to mask odor, you are not addressing or attacking it. If you sniff a new toilet on display at [the store], it’s not going to smell like anything. The smell of clean is not pine oil, lilacs or roses — it’s just air. Odor removal in restrooms should not be buzzing it with aerosols or putting smelly cakes in urinals. The goal should be to remove all odor sources.”

Commercial Restroom Odor Control

Commercial Odor Control and Cleaning Budgets

The trend to cut the budget allocated for cleaning services in commercial facilities can only force any odor control problem to mushroom into a most unpleasant cloud of unwanted scents that are usually associated with mold and mildew.

One example is an organization, which opted to skip cleaning the facility on Friday to be resumed the following Monday. Well, when germs and bacteria get a weekend off, the results can be very smelly indeed.

Krafft states: “From Friday through Sunday, there is bacterial growth going on in the garbage left there since the Thursday cleanup. Those problems are usually solved by making sure disposable garbage does not sit around for three days before it’s emptied.”

Removing Odors in Buildings & Other Commercial Environments

These two types of facilities would utilize different odor control solutions because one area concerns adults and the other children. Despite this, similarities in removing and not just masking odors boils down to four basic principles; using an effective odor control product, locating the exact source of the odor and eliminating it, frequent cleaning and maintaining cleaning equipment.

Masking Odors Versus Metazene Neutralizer

According to Larry McAlpin, director of purchasing and special projects for Rite Way Service in Birmingham, Alabama: “With commercial office buildings, the biggest thing we have to deal with is floor drain traps that tend to dry out and allow sewer gases to come back through. In office buildings, we use a fresh scent instead of a fruity one to coincide with the disinfectants we use.”

Lynn Krafft, CEO of Krafft Cleaning Service in Watertown, New York, added: “Studies show that toilets seem to be the cleanest thing in a building because they are disinfected every night, whereas a desktop may have crumbs and other things on it for a long time.”

Eliminating Malodors in School And Educational Settings

Similarly, educational facilities, especially elementary schools, are well known for problems pertaining to urine odors. Once again, according to Lynn Krafft: “If odor is building up in urinals, they may need to be acid-cleaned and flushed out on a more frequent basis. Toilets and urinals should be cleaned every night.”

The type of building will govern the choice for fragrance. Many schools use a citrus or fruity fragrance, while others prefer different scents. Roger Ford, director of operations of Team MJV in Lafayette, Indiana, claims: “Floors and grout lines can also emit urine odors. They, too, need to be cleaned frequently to remove all traces of urine. Matting placed around urinals and toilets can be effective for odor removal, but they need to be replaced at least weekly; otherwise, they’re counterproductive”

How To Neutralize Trash Chutes and Trash Room Odors

Utilizing the Metazene® odor neutralizer additive, our new, patented MegaFresh™ Modular Diffuser System completely destroys airborne malodors rather than just masking them. This non-mechanical (passive) system is extremely effective and simple-to-use.

Commercial Vaporous Odor Control

Its powerful ability to neutralize malodor vaporizes the trash room as well as the trash chute above, thereby freshening the air of several floors with one or several MegaFresh™ systems. It also operates continuously for 30-60 days, providing the most powerful, long-lasting odor control system ever developed.

The Air-Scent® MegaFresh™ Diffuser System is extremely compact and self-contained and simply hangs within the trash room, eliminating the need for electric, batteries and drum storage. For particularly stubborn odors, one or more systems are recommended to do the job. The extremely versatile MegaFresh™ design snaps together and can be hung in the corners of a trash room and chute without fear of dripping, leaking or spilling.

Controlling Odors in Restrooms, Storage Spaces & Stairwells

Large commercial spaces require special odor control treatment. Solutions such as the MegaFresh™ Modular Diffuser Systems are perfect for disseminating neutral or other fragrance choices for hallways, stairwells, elevator shafts and other large damp musty areas. Fragrance options fall into the citrus, floral and neutral categories and each is recommended in specific ways.

Tangy Tangerine: This is a citrus peel with enormous power that works well in gyms and restrooms, large locker rooms, hallways, kennels and stairwells.

Orange Blossom: is very floral and it is extremely effective in large, warm and damp spaces such as: large, wide hallways and storage areas, stairwells, large locker rooms, restrooms and elevator shafts.

Grape Burst: Can you recall the rich and sometimes overpowering flavor of concord grapes as found in many wines and jams? This effective odor control option takes that scent to the nth degree, and positively eradicates foul odors emanating from restrooms, gyms, trash storage areas, hallways, stairwells, kennels and restrooms.

Neutral: A favorite in many instances, since nondescript odor is most often desired. It’s areas of application are similar to the others and include permanent odor control for gyms, decaying trash storage areas, restrooms, kennels, hallways and stairwells.

Here are 5 scents that will instill a feeling of clean in your establishment.

Clean Scents For Businesses

Odor Control Systems For Every Commercial Application

In addition to air care solutions for restaurants, schools, commercial restrooms and more, we offer the world’s largest line of odor control systems and products, with effective solutions for virtually any malodor situations, from the smallest of spaces to largest of commercial venues, from the simplest of odors to the most stubborn.

Explore our Aroma Beam diffuser.

The Aroma Beam Ambient Scenting Device

These include, but are not limited to, mold and mildew odors from humidity, restrooms odors from uric acid build up around urinals, transient odors, pet odors in hotels or kennels, odors in nursing homes and hospital, ethnic cooking odors, apartment buildings, carpet odors, gyms and fitness areas, locker room odors, and much more.

Delivery applications include fan-operated air freshener systems, HVAC and lobby scenting systems, smoke odor neutralizers (applied hand sprays, electric fogging systems and HVAC systems) with a plethora of liquid, powder and spray neutralizers.

Explore our Aroma One smart fan air freshener.

Aroma One Stand in Environment

ISSA – The International Sanitary Supply Association

The seeds of the International Sanitary Supply Association were sown back in 1923 when Alfred Richter founded the National Sanitary Supply Association. Richter understood the burgeoning need for the cleaning industry to unite as a singular community and recognized its serious connection to human health. The organization grew so large that it became global in scope and in 1966 became ISSA. Over the years, its well-earned tagline became: ISSA–The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association.

This conglomerate is dedicated to the idea that companies must invest in cleaning costs and begin realizing “the value of clean.” This involves the collective objective of providing the necessary tools and information to invest in a most vital business trinity; better health, better environment and ultimately, a better bottom line.

Headquartered in Northbrook, IL, USA, with regional offices in Petersham, Australia; Mainz, Germany and Shanghai, China, the ISSA has a membership that includes more than 7,000 members, including one of its most avid supporters, Air-Scent®.

Air-Scent International’s Mission and the ISSA

Although two decades younger than the ISSA having been established in 1946, Air Scent’s mission is indelibly intertwined with this important organization for both are internationally recognized world leaders dedicated to the highest standards in the manufacture of odor-control products.

Air-Scent International Headquarters Logo

Just as ISSA has become the most widely accepted resource regarding effective business operations and the scientific connection between cleanliness and health, our expertise in the manufacturing of air freshener systems and odor control products is well known all over the world. Both share the vision of creating for business operations of all types a better bottom line through the proper utilization of scent.

If you are a business owner or manager, or a scent marketing or Jan San company that services one, you must remember that fragrance has a powerful effect on human behavior. It also controls to a large extent public perception about a business, particularly concerning how a facility is run, and how much the management really cares about its customers and workers. Foul odors give the impression that a facility is dirty and not taking care of them can destroy any business’s bottom line.

Bad odors must be addressed head on at their source. Think of them as unpleasant and persistent beings, like nasty in-laws who thankfully invade your home only at holiday time. Whatever you do, don’t let them linger or think that just by covering them up they will go away.

Contact our team to take care of foul odors today and enjoy a better bottom line tomorrow.

Final thoughts on bad smells:

My wife’s cooking smells so bad that the flies in the neighborhood all chipped in to buy a new screen for the door. ~Rodney Dangerfield


Explore why our industrial air freshener blocks outdo all others!

Industrial Air Freshener Blocks


Photo Credits: Pixabay and iStock Photo


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