Letters to the Editor
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my calculations
it costs around 11,000 kwh of energy to produce a ton or 200,000 paper towels, so that's around 20 wh per towel, recycled paper is is 60% of that or 12 wh per towel, the driers 2300 watts for 30 seconds, is 20 wh, but you know what I only hit the drier one time, not because my hands are dry (they never are) but who can spend an entire minute drying their hands, forget it, towels on the other hand I use 2 most of the time, sometimes 1, so the towels will be at pretty close to 20 watt-hours, and the electric drier will be pretty close to 20 watt-hours. Almost exactly equal . . . except . . .
Towels lose when you add up the energy costs for the labor for hiring some dork to empty the towel bin, for his car to drive to work, all the other energy costs for him.
A pretty good rule of thumb is if it is cheaper, then it's using less energy and producing less greenhouse gases.
Hot air driers are cheaper that's why businesses want to use them. They are definitely greener, once you add on the additional labor costs for taking care of paper towel garbage.
But they suck. You can't use a hot air drier to wipe up a mess on your conference table, but you can with paper towels, you can't run into the bathroom and grab a drier off the wall, and then use it to wipe the mustard off your shirt, it's just plain worse than some paper towels.
It's clear to me that it's silly to use hot air driers because they are "greener" when you have both a hot air drier and some paper towels for an option, use the paper towels, they work so much better, and since they are already paying for a janitor to take up the garbage they are just as green as the air drier.