We were curious to see how ozone stacked up against alternatives found in the supermarket to remove odours. While we are really impressed with the effectiveness of this chemical reaction that is ozone, we wanted to see what other options provided. We pulled out Fabreze, Dettol Glen 20, Glitz Green and Woolworths select – all of which claim to remove odours.

For our test to remove odours we found the smelliest item in our apartment and in this case it was a pair of running shoes. We firstly chose Dettol Glen 20 and Woolworths select by spraying each shoe and then waiting 30 minutes. Unfortunately the pungent smell did not subside so we moved onto the next two options, Fabreze and ozone. We sprayed one shoe and allowed ozone to build up inside the shoe by putting the ozone generator fan on the shoe for 30 minutes. Both options worked to reduce the odour, however all the sweat was still embedded in the shoe so we put the shoes though a short wash in the washing machine with a natural detergent. The result was that the odours were completely removed. In other tests washing running shoes on their own did not remove odours completely and this combination worked well for this particular item.

The key difference between Fabreze and ozone is that Fabreeze left a particular smell behind where ozone returned a neutral smell. Ozone is just a chemical reaction with oxygen under a type of UV light where Fabreeze is a chemical extracted from corn, hydroxypropyl traps and binds volatilised hydrocarbons making them less volatile and reducing their scent.

We were also interested to see how long the odours stayed away for so we left the shoes untouched for a month and checked the scent. Both kept the odours away but the shoe treated with Fabreze kept the particular fragrance.

Supermarket alternatives are cheap $5-$7 each where a quality Elavo ozone generator is $745 but will last several years and with a little electricity, that is the only cost. There are also multiple uses for ozone where Fabreze can only be used on fabrics. Ozone can be used to remove cigarette smell in cars, cooking smells in homes, prevent mould and mildew or any time that you need to kill bacteria and viruses. Floors, surfaces often attract nasty bugs and ozone is an easy way to clean quickly. Scientific studies prove that ozone is able to kill bacteria very quickly as it is able to break the cell wall of bacteria or stop viruses multiplying. Not many alternatives are able to so that effectively.