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Hand Dryer vs Paper Towels
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2006-04-20 17:59:13
CRIENGLISH.com
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Some issues seem to divide us into two distinct camps, leaving little, if any, middle ground for compromise. Nuclear energy, capital punishment, animal testing ... But of all the issues that trouble us, the Great Hand Towel vs Dryer Debate requires immediate clarification.
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If you often find yourself helplessly torn in the public bathroom, pacing back and forth between deciding whether to use the dryer or the towel, fret no more.Here is our China Drive Features Correspondent Su Xiaowei to resolve this ethical and environmental question for you.
 You can either let the controversy between choosing the hand towel or the electric hand-dryer debilitate you or you can make a decision you can feel good about and can serve as a back up at any cocktail gathering.
But the problem, sadly, is that a definitive answer is stubbornly elusive. Worse, the debate has been considerably muddied by the persistent efforts of industry lobbyists, particularly from the corner labeling of many hand-dryers, to steer it towards a conclusion that says that its products are by far the best option.
Let's, at least, hear their cases. The World Dryer Corporation, which apparently has ambitions of achieving world domination in the hand-dryer business, is probably the best-known disseminator of pro-dryer statistics. Here are their arguments: one ton of paper consumes 17 trees, one ton of paper consumes three cubic yards of landfill, and one ton of paper production pollutes 20,000 gallons of water. It adds that a typical fast-food restaurant in the US uses 25-35 cases of 4,000 multifold paper towels a year, leading to 725-1,015lbs [329kg-460kg] of "unnecessary waste".
You may have noticed how little comparative information there is about, say, the energy use of electric hand dryers. Or the energy and materials required to manufacturer the dryer. Or the pollution emitted into the skies in order to power each a 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".
Some of us also grab handfuls of paper towels, compared to 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, but what the study 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 at your fingertips, 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 about issues 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, it might be best just to do what happens when the towels have run out, or when the dryer is broken: simply wipe your hands on your pants.
China Drive is one of CRI's radio programs aired from Monday to Friday. Chinastic picks the most interesting life reports from China Drive. Stay tuned.
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Director: Liu Chi 
