Hand dryers – why do they even still exist?

This is a conundrum that has puzzled me all of my public-washroom-using life. As I leave the washroom with soggy hands and a feeling of disappointment in hand dryer designers everywhere, I wonder ‘why do hand dryers even exist…they’re shit.’

After years of inadequacy I have finally adopted the mentality of ‘just wipe your hands on your pants and be done with it’.

For years, millions of people across the world have been using their own clothing to finish off the job of crappy hand dryers. Where else in product development would we happily accept such tardiness? Would you buy a kettle that only boiled your water to 56°C? No, you’d take it back and complain it doesn’t do it’s job. So why do people keep buying hand dryers for washrooms and then offering hand towels as well?

I think the whole debate is being looked at backwards, this is what we need to do: Stop trying to prove that hand dryers are better for the environment and just concentrate on making paper towels more sustainable.

* To see how we can make paper towels more sustainable just skip right to the end of my rationally laid out, scientific rant.

Who invented this piece of crap anyway?

According to the Wall Street Journal, hand dryers were invented in 1948 by George Clemens from Chicago (the windy city – anyone else find this ironic?), and in those 63+ years it has gone through only minor improvements like no-touch sensors, with the exception of Dyson’s Airblade hand dryer which still confuses some people. It’s like they’re trying to dry their hands in a vortex, worried it will suck them in to another dimension.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a hand dryer actually dry my hands…Perhaps a finger or two, but a hand?” says Newport Beach product developer George Margolin.

Bacteria Blow-back

Apparently we’re so bothered by other people’s germs that washroom designers have felt the need for hands-free flushing, washing and soap dispensing. So why go to all that effort, if the final link in the sanitation chain is just going undo all your hard work? In a not-so-recent study by Kimberly-Clark, the tissue people found that “Since the inlet is in the same room as the outlet, bugs from people’s hair and skin get sucked in and blown back out onto people’s hands,” says Keith Redway, a British microbiologist.

As my good friend Jody once stated in a bathroom after hearing a lady break wind ‘Ewwww. That’s the wind off her poo.’ – mmm yummy.

A big waste of energy

Researchers and hand dryer enthusiasts harp on about Life Cycle Analysis and how much energy is wasted manufacturing and transporting paper towels. Now fair enough, you install a hand dryer and that’s it. So it may save energy in that respect, but consider this typical person-hand dryer interaction:

1. Person with wet hands approaches hand dryer and pushes the button.

2. Dryer blows for it’s 30 second automatic cycle. But after 10 seconds the person gets impatient and decides to either grab a towel or wipe their hands on their pants.

3. The dryer continues blowing for an extra 20 seconds, with no-one there. Not only that, but the person has had to use a towel as well as a hand dryer – doubly bad for the environment.

We’re being forced into a lose-lose situation. We’re having to use two solutions for one problem, just because the one our conscience tells us to use is actually useless. There has got to be a better way.

Using a hand dryer is like having the heating on in your house with all the windows open

If we just closed the windows and turned off the heating we’d probably be warmer and use less energy. By this I mean that just by getting rid of hand dryers all together, we’d save the amount of energy they expend every time they’re turned on and then not used.  Instantly we’ve saved a small towns worth of energy. Then all we have to solve is how to make paper towels more sustainable, which realistically is a solution not that far away, if you read on.

Being green or being dry?

So, are hand dryers seriously better than a good old paper towel? Science would have you believe that yes, yes they are. But as we all know, stats are objective and can be skewed quite easily just by cleverly picking and choosing what you study – and most studies are done by the purveyors of hand dryers themselves. So of course he’s going to tell you that hand dryers are better for the environment, because it keeps him in beach holidays and fishing trips.

What they don’t tell you is that most paper towels are actually made from recycled paper and industrial waste paper, reducing the energy required to produce them by 60%. Granted putting the used towels in landfill is a bit of an issue, but I have a simple solution. A hand-drying-composting-vegetable-growing-resturant system, not too dissimilar from the Carboard to Caviar project by The Green Business Network from my home county of Yorkshire.

For instance you could take all the used hand towels in your restaurant, cafe, hotel etc. and mulch them up into compost (with a few other plant growing necessities) that you can use to grow vegetables for your business. Or, most washrooms have dedicated paper towel bins that don’t contain any other rubbish. So you could take all the towels and put them in the paper recycling. That way they can be turned back into paper towels or even cardboard boxes used to transport your homegrown vegetables.

Drop back soon when I will have drawn up my entire business proposal on a napkin and then suggested it to Whistler Blackcomb.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea.