The choice between a paper towel and an electric hand-dryer is often a topic for debate, with lengthy discussions being held on the environmental impact of both.
Unfortunately, a definitive answer to this debate has never been established. Worse, the debate has been considerably muddied by the persistent efforts of lobbyists, particularly by those in the hand-dryer industry, to steer it towards a conclusion that says hand dryers are by far the best option.
There is little comparative information about the energy use of electric hand dryers or the energy and materials required to manufacturer the dryer, or indeed the pollution emitted into the skies in order to power each dryer. However, even if all this was included in the equation, calculating the full “cradle-to-grave” impact of each choice is notoriously difficult, particularly as we all dry our hands for different lengths of time and to different degrees of “dryness”. It is also important to note that some of us also take a handful of paper towels rather than just the one or two required.
Variations such as these can lead to huge swings in the findings when assessing the true environmental impact of each choice. In the 1990s, the University of Westminster’s School of Biosciences – sponsored by the Association of Makers of Soft Tissue Papers – carried out some studies into the difference in hygiene between paper towels and dryers. The results are of interest, though, because they show how long you must use a dryer to dry your hands, something that the manufacturers rarely allow for in their calculations. The studies concluded that warm-air dryers were found to “significantly increase general bacterial counts on the hands by an average of 255%”, whereas towels reduced general bacterial counts “by an average of 58% (paper) and 45% (cotton)”.
This is clearly need-to-know information for places such as restaurants, schools and hospitals (absorbent paper towels were invented in 1907 to stop colds spreading among schoolchildren in Philadelphia), but what the studies also showed was that we spend on average about twice as long drying our hands using a dryer – up to 25 seconds – as we do using paper or cotton towels – about 10 seconds. What’s more, it takes 43 seconds to achieve 95% dryness using a dryer compared with 12 seconds using a paper towel.
However, until a truly independent and detailed life-cycle assessment is produced, the debate about which option ranks best environmentally is likely to continue. But even with such a report to hand, there will still be the question of whether you base your decision on how much energy in total is used, or whether your principal concern is how much waste is sent to landfill. And what if some fastballs are thrown into the equation, such as a dryer powered by electricity generated from renewable sources, or towels that are made from recycled, unbleached paper?
While we await such a report, Esco Refresh stocks a wide variety of paper towels as a part of its Paper range of products. Click here to see the range today.
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