Astral Hygiene

  Royal Warrant Appointment from His Majesty King Charles III  20th December 2024  | By Yewan Armstrong We are thrilled to announce that Astral Hygiene Ltd have been appointed as Royal Warrant Holders by His Majesty The King for Cleaning & Janitorial supplies. This huge honour has been appointed to Astral Hygienes as a mark of recognition for the ongoing supply of goods and services to the Royal Household. In 2024 HM The King and HM The Queen granted their first two sets of Royal Warrants of Appointment of the new reign. The grants were made as part of a review of all companies that held Royal Warrants at the time of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Companies holding Royal Warrants of Appointment represent a huge cross-section of trade and industry, from sole traders to multinationals. They are united by a commitment to the highest standards of service, quality, excellence and craftsmanship. The history of the Royal Warrant can be traced back to medieval times, when...

  Unmasking the True Cost of the Cleaning and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industries  30th July 2024  | By Yewan Armstrong It costs the NHS £387 million to treat patients with lung cancer each year. There is a clear link between lung cancer and smoking, however, a little-known and understood contributor to this disease is also lurking in household cleaning products. These products, which churn out harmful toxins (VOCs) into the air, are causing breathing problems, skin irritation and lung damage, putting strain on our already underfunded healthcare system.    This is an example of understanding the True Cost behind not only the products we procure and sell but also the ongoing costs of repairing the damage they are causing to our health, our community, and the environment.    In 2019 The World Bank stated that by 2030, we would need to spend $90 trillion globally to fix the environmental damage we have so far accrued. To put that into perspective this i...

  Part 2 - Environmental Health - Are you doing it right?  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health To follow on from what we learned about visits from your Environmental Health Officer; how they are not the mortal enemy, more a source of knowledge and experience to make sure you are maintaining your hygiene by taking the right approach; we will be talking about how your EHO wants you to wash your dishes. The last time I blogged about the benefits of a colour coding system, and how having all areas assigned a colour ensures  clarity in terms of which mop is to be used where just makes maintaining hygiene standards a lot easier.  Just recapping really quickly these are the colours and the zones which they should be attributed to.   This blog is about an equally important and quite a contentious issue how to wash your dishes the correct way (yes there is a correct way)!  Simple right? Well no it’s not really that simple so p...

  Part 3 - How to prepare for your Environmental Health Inspection - Sanitisers....  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health To follow on from our tour of colour coding and the lessons learned about washing a dish the correct way in this blog I’ll be talking about sanitisers...for both food safe and COVID safe! Sanitise your surfaces properly While I’m going through the sanitisation section, it is so important to get the dish washing correct, but it’s also important to ensure that the surfaces you are touching and putting your freshly sanitised dishes on are clean and sanitised.  Your surfaces need to be sanitised as part of your regular cleaning regime, but also between raw and cooked food preparation.  It is vital again that you are using a two stage process to clean your surfaces; Stage 1: General cleaning using a detergent.   This involves the physical removal of visible grease, dirt and food particles from surfaces a...

  Part 4 - Preparing for your EHO Visit  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong Your environmental health officer will want to see a separate sink for hand washing. Soap...Sanitisers.... Soap with Sanitisers..... This sink must be plumbed in, must have hot and cold running water and must have a good anti-microbial soap, to ensure that all of the germs are killed and washed away and to ensure your hands are sanitised every time you wash. When you wash with a hand soap which is high in sanitisers; which any soap that is anti-microbial is, it will absolutely dry your skin out.  There is no getting around this at all, that is the nature of the beast. Sanitisers kill bacteria, they really aren’t nice chemicals at all, but the Food Standards Agency and Environmental Health require you to wash your hands with Anti-Microbial Soap after touching any food group, before you move on to the next task. At Astral we sell a wide range of soaps, but for catering use you would really need...

  Part 5 - Environmental Health  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene ,  Sustainability ,  Coronovirus You were probably taught at an early age that first impressions were really key in terms of setting up the relationship to set you up for success. If you are laying the foundations incorrectly resulting in a tumultuous relationship with your EHO - you're starting off on the back foot. So let’s get right into it then…….. There is a place for common sense..... Using your common sense when it comes to your EHO visit will really help to build a good relationship with your EHO.  Keep walk ways clear, keep floors clean and dry, keep slip hazards non-existent, make sure your kitchen floors are free of grease and slippery substances by using a good degreasing  chemical floor cleaner .  Make sure that everything looks tidy, and has the appearance of clean.  Make sure your raw and...

  How to prepare for your Environmental Health Inspection  20th May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health This is such a massive topic I’ve decided to spit it into five separate blogs which will be released over the next five weeks. We all know that Food Handling Operators are regularly inspected by the Environmental Health, and for a lot of you out there, the thought of an Environmental Health Inspection can be so terrifying it can make you a little nervous. This blog is meant to alleviate some of that fear, and to let you know that Environmental Health are there to make sure the food you are serving is safe, well cooked, prepared hygienically and most importantly is not contaminated with E-Coli or any other nasty micro-organisms which will make your customers ill! The first point I’d like to make is that Environmental Health will almost never arrive at your premises and ‘shut you down’ unless you are behaving totally unreasonably, and have vermin...

  Astonishing findings..... how often do we wash our gym kit as a nation?  22nd March 2024  | By Anna Armstrong After a sweaty workout, it can be all too easy to throw your clothes to the side, and pick them up again for the next workout. However,  reports  state that gym equipment can harbour more germs than a toilet seat, with 70% of bacteria found in gyms found to be harmful to humans. If you follow this hyper link, you'll be taken to a webpage we found which really lays out what bacteria are on each piece of gym equipment and the necessity as a gym goer to use the sanitisers provided by the gym to clean the equipment before and after touching it! Use something like this....  Cleaner Sanitiser which is BSEN 1276,  BSEN 14476.. .But what about our own gym wear and towels? Sweat and bacteria left on sportswear can lead to bacteria imbalance, odour build-up, skin irritations and even fungal infections. While guidance shows that workout clothes should b...