Free hand sanitizer project takes off

Ottawa's Jordan Harding never imagined his simple idea of bottling and giving away free hand sanitizer would become as big as it has.

Since being profiled in this newspaper three weeks ago, the 38-yearold New Brunswick native says he's distributed more than 500 bottles of hand sanitizer to those at greatest risk from the novel coronavirus. Nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors have signed up through his handsan.ca website.

“I read these requests and think, 'Here is a doctor who works in a hospital and they're not allowed to take any hand sanitizer home with them.' We need to keep these people safe both inside and outside the hospital.”

His Lansdowne condo has been transformed into a bottling factory where he and his girlfriend fill and label the 50- and 60-millilitre bottles from 5 p.m. to midnight since Harding is still working his regular 9 to 5 job as the chief technology officer at an Ottawa tech company.

“It's been a super fun experience, to be honest. I'm a computer guy and everything I build is digital. To actually hold in my hands something that was just an idea a couple of weeks ago feels pretty cool. ”

Harding 's first batch of sanitizer came from a friend who runs a sanitation business. Now he's moved into the big time, bottling up the alcohol-based sanitizer being made by Ottawa's North of 7 Distillery.

The bottleneck, so to speak, is the bottles themselves. They're becoming scarce and Harding 's latest batch is a shipment of 384 spray bottles sourced from a Toronto essential oils company. They cost him $900 but it was all he could find. He's now sourced a cheaper supplier in Vancouver and is awaiting delivery of 1,000 more bottles.

He has received about $4,300 in donations through his website to offset the $5,000 he estimates he's spent of his own money. .

He has a fleet of 12 volunteer drivers to do his deliveries, using an app he created himself that shows addresses as well as the most efficient route for deliveries.