Already widespread as a good practice before the outbreak of the pandemic, the disinfection of working environments and not only will it be increasingly central both for businesses and for public places such as streets and squares. In the middle there is not only greater safety for people during Phase 2 and the next Phase 3: the legal obligations with high fines remain for those who do not comply with the guidelines drawn up by experts and approved by the policy.
There are many Italian companies that in this difficult period have made their technologies available, bringing innovation in this area. To facilitate these best practices - to be preserved in the coming years, as a positive legacy of this dramatic period - there is also a tax credit for the sanitization of working environments as established by article 125 of the Relaunch Decree launched by the government in May. But what are the most emblematic stories that link sanitation and innovation made in Italy?
Demaclenko: from snow to disinfectants
The choice of the South Tyrolean company has gone around the world DemacLenko to convert snow-firing cannons into devices for sanitizing streets and outdoor environments. The British newspaper The Guardian and many other international newspapers have published images of vans around the streets of South Tyrolean municipalities, where Phase 2 started safely thanks to these measures taken in public places. Each vehicle has a high-performance snow generator on board, connected in turn to a pressure pump and a tank containing 100% biodegradable disinfectants (water solubilized hydrogen peroxide) spread along every meter of road. "We hope that the creative solution identified with the Demaclenko snow guns will be of real help to the municipalities involved in the sanitation operations of their territories", he has declared Anton Seeber president of HTI of the Leitner Group, of which Demaclenko is part.
Sunrise, the startup that learns from Wuhan
Another history of innovation in the field of sanitization comes from Veneto. The startup was recently founded Sunrise who conceived Spray for life, a totem to be placed at the entrances of companies and shops designed on the model of other similar devices already adopted in Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid-19 began to spread. This device - a kind of Covid detector - measures the body temperature of people and is also able to sanitize hands and shoes at every entrance and exit. No-touch solution, the machine delivers a hand sanitizing gel solution, while guaranteeing shoe cleaning thanks to a nebulizer with photocell.
HiRef purifies the air
The sanitation sector has consolidated Italian companies that have been growing for years not only in our country, but also on international markets. It is the case of HiRefPaduan company founded in 2001, also specialized in the refrigeration of buildings and data centers. In the midst of the coronavirus emergency, the company expanded its staff with new hires to meet the growing demand. As the entrepreneur Mauro Mantovan explained "in a few weeks we have equaled the turnover of 2019".
As in all other contexts, innovation does not always happen in house: HiRef also works with Jonix, a corporate spin-off founded in 2013 focused on cold plasma technology NTP. Sanitation, thanks to this technique, takes place through an artificially activated air ionization process to break down the polluting substances present in the air in a safe way. Application possibilities range in all closed environments, not only in companies. An accurate sanitization of the environments also benefits works of art, for example, given that HiRef and Jonix have developed an ideal system for museums capable of monitoring air quality.
Alessandro Di Stefano
