Dive Brief:
- Tork is partnering with Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center to add environmentally friendly hygiene product dispensers and deploy a customizable facility management system that will support more efficient restroom cleaning and restocking at the arena, the organizations said in a June 5 announcement.
- The new hygiene systems include Tork’s certified carbon-neutral PeakServe hand towel dispenser and high-capacity Xpressnap napkin dispensers, which can dispense paper products one at a time, reducing waste by up to 49%, said Rachel Olsavicky, regional marketing manager of commercial and public interest at Essity, Tork’s parent company.
- “The new technology will allow us to be even more efficient in our day-to-day operations while preparing before events and managing the guest experience during events,” Wells Fargo Center General Manager Mike Sulkes said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Wells Fargo Center, home to high-profile sports franchises including the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers and the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers, is “one of the country’s top venues for concerts and events,” hosting more than 220 events annually, per the release.
Major event venues like Wells Fargo Center tend to have more varied cleaning needs than office buildings, which typically host the same groups of people day after day, according to Olsavicky. “Office cleaning teams can more easily rely on patterns to help them understand when and where the cleaning needs are greatest on a typical day,” she said.
On the other hand, facilities like the Wells Fargo Center may host two or three events in a 24-hour period, each with its own unique demographic profile, such as a concert with more female attendance followed by a more male-attended sports event the next day, Olsavicky said.
“There is a high level of complexity in managing the hygiene needs of multiple, different events in such short turnaround windows,” she said, adding that facilities managers need to be attentive to foot traffic patterns and staffing while optimizing cleaning plans and considering high-capacity hygiene systems.
The Tork PeakServe continuous hand towel dispenser system contains 250% more hand towels than Tork’s Universal refills and folded towel dispenser, allowing it to serve 600 more people between refills, according to Tork’s website. The dispenser is designed to dispense towels one at a time, so users do not touch towels they do not use, Tork says, pointing to this mechanism as a “very hygienic hand-cleaning solution.”
Tork Xpressnap Napkin Dispensers come in high-capacity stand and countertop models that can reduce waste by at least 25% and up to 49%, respectively, the company says. Both dispense 100% recycled-material napkins one at a time, Olsavicky said.
Wells Fargo Center also plans to install Tork dispensers for bath tissue rolls, foam soap and skincare products, Olsavicky added.
Tork Vision Cleaning, the company’s facilities management system that is being implemented at the arena, provides a “data-driven cleaning solution that harnesses the power of real-time data to identify service and cleaning needs in a facility,” Olsavicky said. This data enables optimized cleaning schedules and more efficient communication between facility cleaning teams, she noted.
For example, Tork Vision Cleaning can reduce dispenser checks by up to 91% and ensure dispensers are stocked up to 99% of the time, Tork says. Those capabilities have “been proven to reduce [guest] complaints by 75%,” Olsavicky said.
Other high-traffic U.S. facilities have recently rolled out systems that use real-time data for more responsive cleaning and restocking of hygiene products. These include Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby airports, which are stocked with period product dispensers integrated with a software that enables custodial staff to monitor data in real time.
“Guest expectations on cleanliness and access to proper hygiene facilities have greatly increased, especially because of the pandemic,” Olsavicky said. “Implementing approachable and successful hygiene practices is critical to success at every kind of event.”
