ISSA – the International Sanitary Supply Association – is the leading trade association for the cleaning industry worldwide, with more than 9,300 distributor, manufacturer, manufacturer representative, building service contractor, in-house service provider, residential cleaning, and associated service members.

Entry® chloride-free de-icer earned the 2019 ISSA Innovation of the Year award at ISSA Show North American 2019, in Las Vegas.

The 2019 ISSA Innovation Award Program included 42 of the cleaning industry’s most innovative products and services. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the program featured three and a half months of online voting. Attendees could see the entries from top manufacturers and suppliers first-hand at the ISSA Innovation Showcase during ISSA Show North America.

ISSA Executive Director, John Barrett, said: “Congratulations to Secure Winter Products for taking home the top spot in a crowded field of compelling innovations. As the worldwide cleaning association, ISSA is proud to recognize Secure Winter Products, the honourable mention recipients and the five category award winners, and all of the entrants for truly embracing ISSA’s mission to change the way the world views cleaning with their amazing advancements.”

Drawbacks of traditional ice melts create demand for cleaner products

Using traditional ice melt brings a trade-off: In exchange for surfaces that are safe and no longer slippery, you’re left with residue from chloride granules. This residue is tracked inside, creating a winter scene you won’t see on any holiday card: Foyers and entranceways covered in unsightly ice-melt particles.

Unlike most other winter weather inconveniences, this messy ice-melt residue has a serious potential for harm.

For starters, there’s the cost, effort, and hassle of cleaning it up—a burden felt acutely by facility managers and operating budgets. Add up labor, equipment, and supplies, and the cost of special cleaning can reach $50 to $60 per entranceway per storm event, according to Mark Warner, Cleaning Management Institute (CMI) education manager for ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association.

Warner points out that with two to three entranceways and two to three cleanings per day during a storm, the added cost of cold weather-driven cleaning can often exceed $400 to $500 per day per building.

Adding insult to injury, ice melt is typically applied most generously in high-traffic places, where the risk of slip-and-fall accidents is greatest. As a result, the biggest residue messes are in full view, taking a psychological toll on pedestrians, patrons, and passersby. Image-focused restaurants, campuses, office complexes, and hotels don’t hold the same appeal when their entranceways are awash in ice melt tracked in from streets and sidewalks. What’s more, the particles themselves can create new slip-and-fall risks.

These drawbacks point to the need for an ice melt that works cleaner, without residue. Designed to meet this need, cleaner products are beginning to appear on the market, offering high performance without tracking.

Understanding why these products are considered cleaner starts with understanding how traditional ice melts work. Chloride-based ice-melt solutions are hygroscopic, meaning they attract moisture from the atmosphere. When they are tracked indoors, they melt, creating dampness and puddles. The result is a cloudy solution that leaves streaks or white crystalline residue on carpets, flooring, and mats—which won’t disappear no matter how many times you clean them.

This reality has fueled a recent spike of interest in ice-melt products that are residue- and chloride-free and have a neutral pH, which are critical characteristics for cleaner melting.

Despite these recent breakthroughs, old habits die hard. No one expects building managers or residents to stop using granular salts altogether anytime soon. However, some professionals like Warner believe that the greatest net results come from a combined use of traditional ice melts and cleaner alternatives. As a cleaning management educator who trains other supervisors, Warner suggests that building managers opt for chloride salts for surfaces farther from building entrances, such as sidewalk perimeters and in parking lots. For areas within 50 feet of a building, it is suggested to use a liquid chloride-free ice melt that won’t track. For example, don’t throw any granular material close to the entrance where people walking into the building would track ice-melt residue inside.

Using cleaner products closer to the building will also create labor savings. In the end, this is a way of increasing the appearance and the safety of buildings and properties while reducing costs.

Branch Creek’s Entry® Liquid Ice Melt Wins Green Seal® Certification for Innovation

Rock-salt alternative spares homes, pets, indoor and outdoor environments from hazardous and corrosive effects of chloride salts

Entry® used by NFL’s Denver Broncos to protect athletes, fans

Entry® liquid ice melt from Branch Creek is the first product to win Green Seal’s coveted Certification of Environmental Innovation under the latest version of requirements, meeting a rigorous standard for transformative product innovation with a de-icer that is safer for people and the planet while performing more effectively than market competitors.

Entry® uses a potassium formate blend that spares homes, residential yards, campuses and corporate parks from the hazardous and corrosive effects of rock salt and other chloride-based deicing products. By breaking down the hydrogen bonds that form when water freezes, Entry® removes thin layers of ice and snow and prevents new ones from accumulating up to a freezing point of minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than any other product on the market.

“Modern environmental challenges demand modern solutions to accelerate the transition to a circular economy – that’s why Green Seal’s Environmental Innovation Standard measures improved health and environmental outcomes, not just ingredient inputs,” said Doug Gatlin, CEO of Green Seal. “Branch Creek has raised the bar for what consumers should expect about the health, safety and effectiveness of de-icers in the marketplace. Entry® is a top-performing product that is significantly safer for families, pets, plants and aquatic life. We’re proud to put a Green Seal on Entry®.”

In a marketplace crowded with meaningless and misleading marketing claims about the health and safety of products, Green Seal takes the guesswork out of identifying proven-safer, proven-greener options with guaranteed performance. Green Seal standards prohibit volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carcinogens, reproductive toxins, phthalates and other harmful ingredients that have no place in our homes, workplaces or environment. Green Seal evaluates the health and environmental impacts of a product in all stages of its life cycle, from raw material extraction, to manufacturing, to packaging, to how the product is used and disposed.

”Entry® was designed from the molecular level to the final product packaging to reduce adverse environmental impacts, making it safer for families, pets, waterways, and floors” explained Nate Clemmer, founder of Branch Creek. “We are incredibly proud that Green Seal and customers like the Denver Broncos recognize our achievement.”

When rock salt and other calcium, sodium and magnesium granular chloride products seep into groundwater supplies or wash into lakes or streams, they reduce the available oxygen levels and threaten aquatic wildlife. Salt-based ice melters also can erode soil, kill plants, burn grasses, and burn the skin and eyes of people and pets.

Entry® uses a potassium formate blend that is chloride-free and safer for people, pets, water, plants, concrete, asphalt, stone and metals than chloride-based products, when used as directed. In addition to health and environmental benefits, Entry provides financial benefits by preventing damage to floors and carpets from tracking chloride-based products indoors. Entry’s neutral pH formulations and clear-as-water application eliminate tracking, reducing the costs associated with manual cleaning in commercial buildings. In the long-term, this reduces the need to fully strip and recoat floors, which represents a significant financial investment.

Entry® is popular among professional organizations like the NFL’s Denver Broncos, whose Mile High Stadium and UCHealth Training Center both rely on Entry® to keep high-traffic, high-stakes areas clear of snow, ice, and corrosive residue. Click here to watch Denver Broncos staff explain  why they chose Entry to protect Broncos athletes and fans from slip-and-fall incidents.

Entry® is available for homeowners at select Ace Hardware stores nationwide and online at Amazon.com. Wholesale customers can acquire Entry® through Secure Winter Products.

About Green Seal’s Innovation Beta Advisory Program Green Seal’s Environmental Innovation Beta Advisory Program is designed for manufacturers striving to advance product innovation for environmental good. The pilot program allows manufacturers pioneering the integration of leading-edge design and performance aspects into their products to fieldtest the new Innovation program while working closely with Green Seal, before the program is launched more widely in the market later this year.

Entry Deicer for Walkways and Entryways by Branch Creek is the first product to earn certification under the new pilot program. Three companies have certified their products under a previous version of the program – Floor Pads by Americo, Solvent Cement by Weld-On, and Floor Pads by 3M.

ABOUT GREEN SEAL, INC.
Green Seal® is a global nonprofit organization with a mission to transform the economy for a healthier, greener world. Since 1989, Green Seal has applied rigorous standards for health, environmental sustainability and product performance to its certification programs to empower better purchasing decisions. Green Seal has certified thousands of products and services in over 450 categories, and is specified by countless schools, government agencies, businesses and institutions. Today, the Green Seal certification mark is a universal symbol that a product or service meets the highest benchmark of health and environmental leadership.

SOUDERTON, PA, February 15, 2018 – SynaTek Solutions has announced that the National Football League’s Denver Broncos Football Club has selected its Entry™ deicing and anti-icing fluid for use at the team’s headquarters at the UCHealth Training Center in Englewood, Colo.

Entry provides users many advantages over the use of traditional calcium, sodium and magnesium chloride granular products. “When tracked into a facility, all chloride granular deicers leave a white residue that can dull the finish of floors and fade the color of carpets,” said Nate Clemmer, CEO and Managing Partner of SynaTek Solutions. “Calcium and magnesium chloride-based products coat floors with an oily, slippery residue that damages wax and urethane finishes and poses a safety risk.” Entry’s neutral pH formulation uses potassium formate, the salt of BASF’s Formic Acid technology, to eliminate tracking, reducing near-term labor costs associated with manual cleaning.

Calcium and magnesium chloride-based products coat floors with an oily, slippery residue that damages wax and urethane finishes and poses a safety risk.

The new deicing and anti-icing fluid also is an eco-friendly, non-corrosive deicing alternative. Granular chloride products are all hygroscopic, meaning they draw moisture from the atmosphere. They are harmful if swallowed by people or pets and will damage turf, ornamental plants and waterways. Potassium formate deicers are 100% chloride free and are readily biodegradable. They are safer for pets, plants, metals and concrete.

Entry melts ice faster than chloride-based granular products, which take, a minimum of three to five minutes to achieve an acceptable melt – and as much as 10 minutes. Potassium formate, enables Entry to increase the speed of snow/ice melt to about 30 to 50 seconds by reducing the freezing point to approximately minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit.

Entry is easy to apply and is a cost-effective deicing and anti-icing product. Most users will achieve a lower application cost per 1,000 sq. ft. with liquids than with granular deicers.

SynaTek Solutions markets Entry to snow professionals and facility managers through its Secure Winter Products brand and to consumers through Branch Creek. Entry was introduced in the United States in June 2017. For more information, visit http://securewinterproducts.com or https://chloridefree.com.

About SynaTek Solutions

Headquartered in Souderton, Pennsylvania, SynaTek Solutions develops and manufactures products and technologies for the golf, landscape, agriculture and ice melt industries. Through its four brands — SynaTek Reach distribution, Branch Creek, Ecotronics and Secure Winter Products — SynaTek offers customers the most complete line of products and services designed to maximize profits while minimizing environmental impact.