How to Make a Homemade Hand Sanitizer (Following WHO Guidelines)

In this post, I will show you how to make a homemade hand sanitizer following the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines.

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Essential reasons to make a homemade hand sanitizer that follows WHO guidelines:

Reason #1 Safety

Making a homemade hand sanitizer where you control the ingredients is vital to ensure it is non-toxic and won’t cause unnecessary harm to you and your family members. Unfortunately, the FDA has found that some of the hand sanitizers brought to market contained methanol, which can be highly toxic and lead to methanol poisoning.

Reason #2 Effectiveness

Unfortunately, many of the recipes that can be found online for making DIY hand sanitizers do not have the right percentage of alcohol to combat a lot of the most problematic bacteria and viruses. As discussed in my last post on creating a safe disinfectant spray for a homemade hand sanitizer, it needs to contain between 60-80% alcohol to be effective. In that post, I go a lot more in-depth and provide more research on why all the individual ingredients are effective at combating viruses and bacteria.

The homemade hand sanitizer recipe I provide here contains 60-70% alcohol and uses non-toxic ingredients that fit the WHO guidelines for being effective against bacteria and viruses.

Homemade Hand Sanitizer Recipe

Use the full safe disinfectant spray recipe and ratios from my last post, which contains alcohol (Everclear or High Percentage Rubbing), hydrogen peroxide, grapefruit seed extract, and optional essential oils (3-5 drops per bottle). Or use the super simple version, which is just alcohol and water.

Add ½ teaspoon of vegetable glycerin or aloe vera gel per ounce to make a DIY hand sanitizer. The glycerin or aloe vera gel makes it gentler on the hands and slows the evaporation of alcohol.

I recommend using a one-ounce glass pump bottle for your homemade hand sanitizer.

I hope you enjoyed this post on making a simple safe homemade hand sanitizer that fits WHO as well as CDC guidelines. It is really easy to use the safe DIY disinfectant spray I taught you to make in the last post and turn it into hand sanitizer by putting it in a smaller pump bottle and adding aloe or glycerine.  If you would like more information on creating safe and effective cleaning products for you and your family, consider checking out my book Easy Green Cleaning, available on Amazon.