GreenSage E-zine 11/2008

Paper Towels or Hand Dryers
by the GreenSage Team

Ah, life's many choices. Every day. Big picture or little? Convenience or consequence? Green, greener, or greenest?

OK, to be greenest when drying hands in a public restroom, is it paper towels, or the automated electric hand dryer on the wall?

Let's think this through a minute to calm any eco-anxiety about this issue — because it has been debated countless times by architects, designers, facility managers and property owners.

Paper Towels
Paper towels can be made from virgin paper or recycled paper. Virgin paper requires more trees and more dioxin for bleaching. Doesn't sound like the best choice. Recycled paper saves trees, can reduce energy and water usage, uses more benign chemicals, and requires less bleaching than virgin paper production. However, recycled paper creates more disposal materials from the process in terms of "sludge" with its potentially toxic materials such as inks and additives, although the sludge can be recycled or disposed of by an environmentally controlled method. The paper being recycled may otherwise be dumped into landfills or burned emitting particulates and toxins into the air. So when choosing between virgin paper or recycled paper, the greenest may depend entirely upon the paper mill's process of what they do with their sludge.

With either type of paper, three things need to be factored in when considering what is 'greenest' — part of their embodied energy: production consumes water and energy in a factory; the transportation from factory to destination restroom; and once used at the final destination restroom, a plastic bin bag is usually used for the discards and all of that is again transported somewhere — maybe the paper to be recycled again, and . . . what about the plastic bag? Its likely all destined to a landfill.

The inherent embodied energy, the ongoing cost of paper toweling, the landfill costs, plus the daily operations of restocking, cleanup and maintenance aren't particularly very green.

Hand Dryers
In the past, hand dryers have been fairly inefficient and not designed to conserve energy. Very recently, that has changed significantly. The embodied energy of the hand dryer does include raw materials and use of electricity both during production at its factory and at its destination restroom. Here too we must factor in transportation to its destination restroom, but then, no further issues arise.

With hand dryers, the maintenance is minimum and the unit is always available to be used, no running out of hot air.

Our research tells us that paper towels and hand dryers involve similar amounts of energy over their lifetimes, but making paper takes more resources and produces more pollution, more landfill.

Convenience wise, paper towels usually work much faster than hand dryers, but they don't clean your hands as thoroughly as hand dryers, and they don't inhibit the growth of bacteria on the skin as tests have shown hand dryers do.

Cost wise, further research shows that hand dryers cost about $500 to purchase, and paper towels about $25 a box, making 'first cost' for hand dryers higher. However, over the long term, paper towels will be more costly because its is a lifetime cost. Plus, facilities spend more money on waste pickup and disposal.

We conclude that hand dryers are greenest, particularly those that are fast drying, with durable parts and construction, and made to be energy efficient.

Check out Excel Dryer's energy efficient XLERATOR hand dryers which fit that description.