Paper Towels v. Hot Air Dryers
by Jim Coufal
I suspect many readers will have been in a public restroom where their eye is caught by a shiny hot air hand dryer and even noticed the sign on most that reads something like, “Thanks for helping us save trees.”
As a forester, such signs catch my attention, and raise questions. What is the concern for saving trees. It’s a green (environmental) era when people want to save everything — while still using everything.
Trees and forests are American icons, sacred and holy, and there many legitimate reasons to save them. What most Americans seem to overlook is that their demand for wood products means some trees will need to be cut, here or elsewhere.
Most of the wood used to make paper towels comes from managed forests, where the harvest is the end of a cycle of reproducing, tending, caring for, protecting and nurturing the trees as a crop of the land, just like tomatoes, cabbage, cranberries and so many more crops. The big difference is time: most agricultural crops are harvested yearly, or in a very few years. Tree crops may take several years, or decades, or more. Trees are a renewable natural resource.
This may bring visions of tree plantations, grown from seedlings planted after the mature harvest. And this happens under the right conditions. But in many cases, the forest reproduction following a harvest is the result of natural regeneration from surrounding trees or trees specifically left in the harvest area for the purpose of seeding the ground. Most of New York’s forests, often called “wilderness” by the public, are the result of such natural regeneration after a historical time well over 100 years ago, before the advent of professional forestry, known as cut-out-and-get-out.
No effort was made to seeing a new forest was regenerated. Or see what happens after a wildfire or windstorm: the forest regenerates.
Recognizing that trees are a renewable natural resource is only part of the response to saving trees. The other question has to do with the effectiveness of paper towels and hot air dryers. This is usually looked at in two regards, best laid out in terms of which is best hygienically versus which is best environmentally.
Regarding hygiene, the Mayo Clinic reviewed studies on the relative efficiency and hygiene of paper towels and hand dryers and concluded that, “From a hygiene viewpoint, paper towels are superior to hand dryers,” and – in a pragmatic sense – the towels are also preferred by about six out 0f 10 people.
Studies have found paper towels dry the hands better, result in fewer bacteria remaining on the hands, are less likely to irritate the skin, are certainly much less noisy than hand dryers and result in fewer bacteria being spread around in the air. Paper towels can result in sloppy messes on the floor or waste basket, and newer hand dryers may narrow the gap on hygiene.
Concerning the environment, paper is one of the greatest landfill items (it is biodegradable). There are costs in air and water pollution in the harvest, transport and production of trees and in paper production, as well as the cost of fossil fuels used. One study concluded that “opting for a hand dryer over towels hardly earns you an environmental halo, as the net difference in long-term carbon emissions is minuscule at best.”
Energy costs have been found to favor dryers, but not in a huge way.
For any given restroom, there are many variables to consider when determining which method is best, such as the distance of transportation, the source of energy and its cost and others. It shouldn’t hinge on saving trees as to which method you choose to dry your hands.
If you see hygiene as most important, paper towels would seem the way to go. If you favor looking at environmental impacts, hot air hand dryers seem to carry some advantage, although not as much as one might think.
In any case, cloth runner towels show up worst.
Getting people to clean up after using the bathroom is a problem in itself. One study in the UK in service stations found that of the 200,000 people using the “loos,” only 32 percent of men and 64 percent of women used the soap dispenser, creating problems left here to your imagination.
Bottom line, choose what serves your purpose, but do wash your hands.
Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.