For once the grubby school kid is right!

You might not have thought it, but knowing a thing or two about hand dryers could spark a few interesting conversations with your mates. For those of you without mates: DO NOT WORRY- simply reflecting on important topics like these is a very healthy thing to do!

Every time you use a hand dryer you use electricity, which comes from power stations, which essentially means your damaging the environment (assuming that most of the energy we create comes from non-renewable sources). On the other hand every time you use a paper towel your encouraging to cut down a tree, not to mention the costs involved in manufacturing, packaging, transporting, storing, collecting in the trash, transporting the trash and disposing in a landfill (that’s right, paper towels may be made from recycled materials, but they aren’t recycled themselves). While trees are usually replaced, it should be recognised that the production & remove of towels and the production of electricity both have similar impact on the environment (in terms of CO2 emissions etc).

Hand dryers also have manufacture and transportation costs, but once installed they last for 8 years or more, and rarely need maintaining, whereas paper towels need replenishing by staff on a regular basis. People are often very messy when disposing of their used towels! Replacing bin liners should be taken into account too.

From a business’ point of view it is cheaper for you to dry your hands using the hand dryer. By all means do your own calculations; I visited Hygiene Supplies Direct to view their selection of hand dryers. I took averages of the cost per hand dryer, and average energy consumption and worked out how long it takes to run one for 30-60 seconds. I used the same site to work out the average cost of drying my hands using paper towels (don’t forget that you often use more than one towel at a time, and children often use more than three!). It really is cheaper to use a hand dryer- if 1000’s of people are using the rest room it pays for itself in a matter of weeks!

When it comes to bacteria, hand dryers with heating elements increase the number of bacteria on your hands by about 255%; the new generation of hand dryers by companies like Dyson only increase bacteria by about 77%; while paper towels reduce the number of bacteria by about 70%. You can form your own opinions on these figures. (Visit this page to view the results of the test that The University of Westminster conducted).

Conclusions, conclusions... I think it’s fair to say that paper towels aren’t the answer unless you are in a rest room that should mean you walk out with less bacteria on your hands than when you walked in (a hospital for example). The manufacture and handling of towels is always going to remain fairly constant, whereas electricity will (hopefully) start coming from renewable sources in the not so distant future which makes me think hand dryers will be the answer because once manufactured they don’t damage the environment. Maybe Dyson have introduced a dryer that compromises on the bacteria problem.

It might receive a few funny faces from the people stood at the hand dryers or the people putting used paper towels in the bin, but maybe the grubby little school boy inside us was right all along... why not just wipe your hands on our trousers!