Which is more hygienic and environmentally friendly - hand dryer or paper towel?

Answer 1

better idea. just wipe ur hands on ur pants no energy or trees used. may not be hygenic but it wont kill u.

Answer 2

Both use energy, the hand dryer to produce the heated air flow, and the paper towel by making the paper. The hand dryer is cleaner as it does not produce paper waste. Also most paper towels are made of a bleached paper which dumps harmful chemicals into the water supply, as well as requiring much more energy to produce. The only short comings of the hand dryer is the electrical power it requires and the fact most are on a timer and ti runs long after you are finished.

Answer 3

It depends. If you have an energy-star hand dryer, then it uses less power and its more energy efficient. If you have a normal hand dryer, then paper towels are much more efficient. Hair dryers take up more tons of co2 in the world, therefore the paper towels are better. Paper towels do kill trees, but for 1- we have plenty, and 2- you can recycle the paper towels. Hope that helps.

Answer 4

I'd say that paper towels are more hygenic, because you wipe off most of, if not all, the soapy water left on your hands after washing them.

When you try to use a hand dryer, your hands are still moist after using it, so you end up wiping them on your pants or something, which is less hygenic than using paper towels.

However, paper towels are much less environmentally friendly, because they DO waste much more energy than hand dryers--almost all bathrooms don't recycle their paper towels (although the towels themselves may be recycled) after usage, so tons and tons of CLEAN paper towels are just being put into landfill--it's horrible, and stupid, really. Hand dryers are much better overall.

Answer 5

I only care about hygiene - and so should you. Why? Well, logically, if one is more concerned about being 'friendly' to the environment, one must be less concerned about one's hygiene. If that's true, then one must be more prone to picking up viruses or bacteria, often communicable.


Hypothetical case 1: No difference between the 2 options, both equally hygienic and environmentally friendly

Answer: use whichever the bathroom has and sleep guilt-free that night.

Hypothetical case 2: Both equally environmentally friendly, but one is more hygienic that the other

Answer: use whichever the bathroom has and sleep guilt-free that night, though you may wish to keep anti-bacterial wipes in your purse/pocket/glove compartment for use AFTER you use the one that’s less hygienic. Also, be realistic – if one is only 5% less hygienic than the other, is it really an issue?

Hypothetical case 2: Both equally hygienic, but one is more environmentally friendly than the other.

Answer: This reveals the ridiculousness of the original question, from a CONSUMER’S point of view, since the consumer would have entered the bathroom in order to take care of a pressing need. If one is so socially conscious to refuse to use whatever option the bathroom offers for cleansing, then I’ll bet they are few and far between. Rather, they will use whatever option is there, instead of walking to the next bathroom in hopes that their preferred method of ablution is available THERE.

I assume, however, the question is asked with the intent in mind to hector some poor bathroom owner into choosing the environmentally friendly solution, either by petty and annoying letters or phone calls or probably by harassing some local shill of a politician whose aspirations are far loftier than their IQ into sponsoring legislation forcing the optimum solution onto private and public businesses. Unless you’re honestly just curious about which is better and would still use either one if need be.

But I’ll wager that trees are a renewable resource, right? And growing a renewable resource like trees which themselves supposedly are environmentally friendly is a good thing too, yes?

Reading through the answers, I immediately found 2 completely opposite opinions as to what is more hygienic, which should tell you what you really need to know – an awful lot of people out there are honestly ignorant and awfully enthusiastic about sharing it in public forums – they both cannot be right. Naturally this issue has been reduced to simplistic terms – paper products produce waste, dump harmful chemicals, yada yada yada, and most of the information is stated authoritatively without source references. In other words, just accept my word for whatever I choose to tell you. Well, if hand dryers ARE actually less hygienic than paper towels, and the greenies want you to use them anyway, how many more seriously ill people would result if hand dryers were then mandated? How many man-hours of productivity would be wasted? How many resources would be brought to bear in the medical community to care for these people?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know how to frame the real questions properly. Most of what you’ll read on these forums will either be ill-informed or simple propaganda – learn to do the research yourself using primary sources rather than accepting the word of complete strangers.

Answer 6

I believe a hand dryer is more hygienic. If your community is dedicated to recycling, the paper towel usage is okay, but it's only as environmentally friendly as the users and the communities passion about recycling.

Answer 7

Paper towels are probably a little better from a hygiene perspective, dryers blow dirty air from the walls and floor onto your hands, and towels remove any remaining residue and are typically close to sterile. Hand dryers, however, use less energy overall than paper production, and create no solid waste.

Answer 8

Well, the hand dryer is more hygienic but once the energy has been used, it's gone. And. the paper towel could be recycled. Kind of a tossup.

Answer 9

While the hand-dryer is probably more eco-friendly,since it
only uses about a penny's worth of electricity to run for several
minutes,I avoid using them whenever I can. If there are paper
towels to dry my hands/face with,I ALWAYS use them for
hygenic reasons. When I am done drying my hands I then use
the damp towel to grab the door handle with so I can avoid
touching a filthy handle grabbed by many dirty hands. After
all, I just washed my hands. I think all restrooms should have
doors which push open from the inside to exit from. This way
we can feel better about pushing a door open with our foot
or elbow and still use a blow-dryer to dry our hands.

Answer 10

A hand dryer is definitely more hygienic and energy efficient. If everyone stopped use of just one paper towel or napkin a day it would save a forest - literally!

Answer 11

I work in a hospital that is big into hygene, technically the electric hand dryer is more hygenic, in reality, the towels are. Every time you dry your hands your pressing a button that everyone has pressed, so you are contaminated by any germs that the previous person touched. Additionally, we are told to turn the faucets off with paper towels to prevent germs from getting on our hands from the faucet handles. We also are told to open doors with paper towels again to prevent contamination from the door handles.