Ok, this is an uncomfortable question but it might be worth talking about.
We clean our hands when we leave a public restroom. I hope you all do. But have you seen the floor in a mens public restroom? I don't understand if people's homes look like this, but there is often a puddle of piss right beneath a urinal. We really do live with animals. Maybe it's just the area I live in.
But this is the real reason why we don't eat food off of the ground. People walk into public restrooms and they track that shit everywhere. They have no other option. If it weren't for that the ground would actually be reliably pretty sanitary. A little shoe rubber that itself has only ever been on clean surfaces would be cleaner than any sponge used to wipe a table. I'm not saying we should eat off the ground if we did solve this problem. The point is concern about the ground being dirty is legitimate, but it's worth noting that it is almost only due to the existence of public bathrooms. And even if you never go into a public bathroom it is still a concern because you or your family/peers walked over ground that someone else walked over who had been in a public restroom.
I think it is ironic that we do wash our hands because our shoes probably do more to contaminate public areas than if people didn't wash their hands.
So the need is obvious. The question is if there is a solution that isn't worse than the cure.
Here is my idea. A three station set up against a wall. One is a shallow basin of sanitizer. The next is a rubber mat used to get the bulk of the fluid off. Something like this. The next would just be a standard commercial rug. The rubber mat in between would prevent the rug from getting so wet it doesn't do anything.
I'm talking about 2 millimeters of sani-fluid.
Good idea? Bad idea?