Better: electric or paper?

[Equipoise]

One of those situations where you’ve never heard of something, but then you come across it and then it seems to show up again and again just happened to me. The other night I was at a movie theater (the “600” in Chicago) and they had the coolest hand dryers in the bathroom, a type that I’d never seen before. It was a Dyson. Now I read Cecil’s column and the Dyson is mentioned. Then I read this thread and the Dyson is one of the Google ads. It’s weird when that happens!

The Dyson was fantastic and, I must admit, fun to play with. I hope to see more of them elsewhere.

Good column. Good job Una!

[Randy_Seltzer]

@Ian Varley

Nice article, guys.

Something that’s related to the paper towel / electric dryer choice (though not directly to the environmental impact) is the germ factor. I remember going to a demonstration of a new hand washing technology (isn’t my life fabulous?) wherein people would stick their hands into these spinning cylinders that sprayed them down and got them “operating room clean” in about 10 seconds (allegedly). Anyway, they had paper towels to dry off with, because they said that electric hand dryers actually cover your hands with a thick layer of all the bacteria that’s hanging out in the bathroom air. Makes sense to me - I haven’t used one since. Any comments?

I actually found myself wondering this too. But the question also felt familiar. I searched the archives and found this. It’s the SD article about the germ factor. I’d read it before but had forgotten…

Enjoy!

[iwakura43]

How long have those Dyson dryers been around? When I went to Japan this February I was amazed that they had hand dryers that actually worked (using, Dyson says, high-speed air to blow the water off your hands (much like at a carwash), instead of warm air to evaporate it.) The machines looked quite similar to the Dyson one in the picture, but looked much older, wasn’t obviously branded, and was a generic sort of beige.

[Una_Persson]

@iwakura43

How long have those Dyson dryers been around? When I went to Japan this February I was amazed that they had hand dryers that actually worked (using, Dyson says, high-speed air to blow the water off your hands (much like at a carwash), instead of warm air to evaporate it.) The machines looked quite similar to the Dyson one in the picture, but looked much older, wasn’t obviously branded, and was a generic sort of beige.

They might have been the Mitsubishi Jet Towel, a model Cecil’s researchers also looked at.

http://www.mitsubishijettowel.com/overview/

[dropzone]

Y’know, if everybody just followed the advice found in the Hitchiker’s Guide and always had their own towels we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Cecil Adams

I’ve tried them all, and I say bunk — drying my hands almost always takes two or more cycles

You’re doing it wrong.

@Cecil Adams

and researchers at the University of Westminster back me up

So are they.

[Meurglys]

@Una Persson

They are laundered by a service when they reach the end. AFAIK they are not meant to go around more than once.

I worked in fairly small office in the 70s & 80s which had several of these units. They sometimes jammed, or reached the end of the towel, but they couldn’t go round again… they needed replaced.
Someone in the office (sometimes myself) had to change the rolls of towel when the old ones were finished, and once a fortnight the dirty ones would be swapped for clean ones with the Vendor. We always had several spare rolls on hand so, theoretically, we never ran out of clean towels…

[nkuvu]

Curious about drying times.

Here in Arizona, the air dryers run for what I consider to be an inordinately long time. I’m done drying my hands long before the dryer turns off.

So it would seem that the local relative humidity would affect the costs as well. I would expect that air dryers would be much more economical in places like Arizona than they would be in more humid climates.

Was this accounted for in the analysis?

[Una_Persson]

@nkuvu

Curious about drying times.

Here in Arizona, the air dryers run for what I consider to be an inordinately long time. I’m done drying my hands long before the dryer turns off.

So it would seem that the local relative humidity would affect the costs as well. I would expect that air dryers would be much more economical in places like Arizona than they would be in more humid climates.

Was this accounted for in the analysis?

I sure didn’t; I don’t know if Cecil did, but I would doubt it because I would think it would be very difficult to quantify, and difficult to come up with a good average figure or effect. I mean, the variables involved just seem really…well, variable, IMO. I’ll ask him and see what he says.