Lacura Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer
This post contains affiliate links.
Remember when everyone was buying hand sanitizer?
We do.
Those days probably seem like a lifetime ago, but that doesn’t mean hand sanitizer isn’t important. Quite the opposite: the 2020-2021 pandemic years helped elevate the importance of hand hygiene in reducing the spread of illness. Today you can go into most workspaces — offices, schools, retail spaces — and see hand sanitizer readily available.
Hand sanitizer has limitations. It isn’t great against certain diseases, like norovirus, which causes stomach flu. It also isn’t ideal for removing certain chemicals, and isn’t as effective when your hands are dirty or greasy. In most cases, traditional hand-washing with soap and water is going to be your best bet when possible.
When it’s not possible, the right kind of hand sanitizer can help reduce the transmission of certain diseases.
Aldi has been through various incarnations of hand sanitizer over the years. How does the current one stack up?
Lacura Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer is an Aldi Regular Buy. You can find it in stores all the time, typically with the other hygiene and personal products.
It comes in an 8-ounce pump bottle and currently costs $1.85, or 23 cents an ounce. For comparison, an 8-ounce bottle of Purell hand sanitizer at Walgreens runs 38 cents an ounce, while a 12-ounce bottle of Walmart’s Great Value hand sanitizer comes out to around 25 cents an ounce. Aldi’s price is competitive with similarly sized bottles. You can do a little per ounce better buying in bulk — Amazon sells multipacks for around 21 cents an ounce — but you have to spend more overall to get there.
Keep in mind, though, that there are some differences between hand sanitizers. The most notable is variation in the percentage of ethyl alcohol, the primary disease-killing ingredient. The CDC recommends that sanitizer has at least 60% ethyl alcohol, and all of the ones I’ve mentioned do. However, Purell and Great Value have 70%, while Amazon has 62%.
Lacura also has 62%. That’s, again, above the CDC guidelines but below some other brands. It’s also lower than the 70% found in Aldi’s Source hand sanitizer from years ago.
Lacura Hand Sanitizer also contains the following ingredients:
- water
- carbomer and / or acrylates/C10-30 akyl acrylate crosspolymer, a thickening agent
- fragrance
- glycerin, a gel that is a central ingredient in any hand sanitizer (including homemade ones)
- isopropyl myristate, which helps with skin absorption
- tocopheryl acetate, a form of Vitamin E that is an antioxidant
All of these are common ingredients in hand sanitizers, including some of the competing ones I mentioned earlier.
This hand sanitizer looks, feels, and smells like typical hand sanitizer. It has enough of a gel consistency to go on the hand without dripping, and the smell is clinical without being too strong. I have no complaints on any of those merits.
The Verdict:
Lacura Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer is a decent option for hand sanitizer. It’s one of the cheaper options we can find for an 8-ounce pump, and it meets CDC guidelines for minimum alcohol percentage. Some competing brands have a higher alcohol content, though, so it’s up to shoppers to determine how much that matters. Regardless, if you need it, Aldi has it.