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North Van manufacturer giving away cleaning product for food bank donations

Drive-by swap set up outside Charlotte Road warehouse
Cleaning supplied COVID
Doug von Dersch (right) of Pacific Northwest Green Cleaning Products and Ryan (left) and Neil Cody of Charterhouse Design Inc. label the cleaning product they are giving away outside of their North Vancouver warehouse. photo Mike Wakefield, North Shore News

A North Vancouver manufacturer of eco-friendly industrial cleaning products is breaking down his cleaner into household-sized jars to give away for people to disinfect their homes during the coronavirus crisis.

All that Doug von Dersch, the president of Pacific Northwest Green Cleaning Products, is asking for in return for a jar of his cleaning solution is a donation to the food bank. The cleaning product comes as a powder made up primarily of hydrogen peroxide mixed with soda ash, said von Dersch.

Health Canada’s list of hard-surface disinfectants for use against coronavirus includes several products that have hydrogen peroxide as the active ingredient.

“There’s a reasonable number of studies that have shown that hydrogen peroxide is a very effective de-activator of the coronavirus,” said von Dersch. “It breaks down into oxygen and water after use, so it's immaculately safe.”

Von Dersch, who has been in the cleaning supplies business for 10 years, said he spent the weekend with his son, wife and employees from North Vancouver's Charterhouse Design Inc., with whom he shares warehouse space, breaking down his industrial supply into more than 150 small jars that people can grab for household use. The jars come with an instruction sheet explaining the benefits of using hydrogen peroxide against coronavirus as well as step-by-step instructions on how to turn the powder into a disinfectant spray.

“So people pick up the jar, they pick up the instruction sheet, they take it home and they can use it around their household,” he said. “It’s an amazing disinfectant in the laundry. … Our neighbours downstairs that are tenants, both of them work in health care and so they use it to disinfect their scrubs.”

The swap is set up from approximately 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily on a shelf outside of the Pacific Northwest Green Cleaning Products warehouse at 1481 Charlotte Rd. in North Vancouver. Following physical distancing guidelines, there will be no human contact at the site, with the public requested to pick up one jar of cleaner and leave a non-perishable donation for the food bank. Von Dersch said he’s collected two bins of food from swaps already made through word of mouth.

He was inspired to take action after seeing the suffering COVID-19 has inflicted on the community.

“My heart bleeds for our friends over at the Lynn Valley Care Centre. In fact, I dropped a bucket of it off for them to use,” said von Dersch. “And I started to think there's so many households and friends we have over here on the North Shore. … That was the motivation behind this initiative. This is for our community."