Letters to the Editor
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What about those cloth-towel dispensery things (you know, the ones where you dry your hands on a bit of clothlike towel, which is automatically dispensed then sucked back into the machine when you wave your hands in front of it). I presume that they work by somehow drying and disinfecting the ream of clothtowel that they put out? In my mind those always seemed the most environmentally friendly.
And all the hooha about dryers and bacteria... honestly. A restroom is probably one of the cleanest places in your average mall complex/office. I'm not saying you shouldn't wash your hands, but some people just get really hysterical about "germs" and the like.
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Oh, there's a fourth way
Don't wash your hands so much. Better for everyone's immune system, too.
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An American dilemma?
When I lived in Japan, everyone seemed to be in the habit of carrying a hankerchief in order to dry their hands after using the public restroom. It was part of their accessorizing. In other words, another way of expressing who one is by what one wears and uses. The Japanese are also trying to get away from the disposable chopstick by going back to the old habit of everyone carrying their own in a small chopstick case. Again, elegant and self-expressive.
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The Damn Things Don't Work!
I apologize for skirting the substantial issues raised at length in the article, but the very thought of those bogus hot-air "hand dryers" in public restrooms transforms me into a raging amalgamation of Andy Rooney and Ralph Nader.
The damn things don't work! Let me amend that: last week, I visited a restroom in a New Jersey restaurant equipped with an enormous white hand-dryer with a nozzle like a Titan V rocket. It was so powerful that one's skin rippled like bedsheets hung out in the breeze; it worked.
That was the exception, trust me. Otherwise, that malign invention is just a shuck, a fraud arising from an unholy alliance between landlords and amoral manufacturers out to make a buck. Years ago, the slumlord of the building where I work sent out a memo trumpeting the abolition of paper towel dispensers in favor of the more "sanitary and efficient" hot air dryers.
When the building manager stopped by our office, I asked, "Do you have these installed in your home?" Does anyone? And spare me the suggestion that they work fine as long as one uses the correct technique; as Jerry Seinfeld has observed, this invention requires a man to stand leisurely in a place filled with a revolting stench.
I might not be so keen an observer of men's room behavior as Larry Craig, but my empirical data convinces me that it's hard enough to encourage men to actually wash their hands in the first place. And frankly, the paper towel is far more versatile than dryers recycling stinky hot air. The main effect of these technogical abominations is to deter and discourage proper hygiene in the course of saving landlords money on stocking and disposing of paper products, and the related unclogging of plumbing fixtures.
Some men eschew drying their hands in their pockets, and will skip washing them to avoid the inevitable. Readers would do better reciting this rant at their dripping hands to see if all of this hot air gets the job done!
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Had we got as far as foreplay?
Why am I reminded so strongly of John Cleese's sex education teacher in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life"?
You know the scene. His line, when asked by a schoolboy to clarify a rule, is immortal:
"It's perfectly simple," he says, and then launches into a spectacular oration that is singularly informative, and totally nonsensical at the same time.
So, of course, both hand-towels and dryers are, depending on where you are and what kind you use and what time of year it is and whether it's humid or dry and how long you use it and where it's mounted and if it's a new or old one and if the towels are blah blah blah environmentally friendly.
It's an answer -- but so is "Out!" to the parental question "Where are you going?"
Seriously, it's exactly this kind of complex "one study said" followed by "but in another experiment" that pushes people not to investigate more, but simply to give up and abnegate the decision entirely.
If the study didn't include recycled paper, then why did you publish it because it's frankly incomplete to the point of being completely useless and misleading.
We must get away from guilt-tripping people into environmental behavior (hello! backlash!) and start empowering people with correct, complete information that allows us all to participate in environmental success rather than simply more of this environmental dithering. How much carbon was emitted in chasing down this complete non-answer?!
The truth is for hand-towels versus dryers, the solution is utterly simple. Lobby a couple of state governments to regulate that any "hand drying method" must produce less than half of the current best case carbon emission per hand-drying cycle.
And let the market do the rest...
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reuse
i carry my own reusable shopping bag. i also carry my own chopsticks. why not a compact hand towel?
not a bad idea. think i'll pick up a few tomorrow.
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Hand towels?
I've also wondered about this dilemma, but I think the writer ignored an important alternative -- hand towels.
A personal hand towel can be kept clean and reused many times. Granted, there is an environmental cost to producing towels but this could be reduced by using towels made from hemp and flax.
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use your handkerchief
When I first moved to Japan I was surprised to see that most men, women, and teens carry around a handkerchief. These can be the traditional white cotton, but often have colorful prints (my favorite has cowgirls on it) and can also be made of terry cloth. A mini-towel! It comes in handy for blotting perspiration in summer, but the main use year round is to dry hands after washing up in a public toilet. Many public restrooms here don't even have paper towels OR electric dryers, though more and more do. At first I didn't like the idea of a damp thing in my purse or backpack, but found problems and discovered that it does dry within an hour or two usually. So if you are caught in one of those without a hankie, you pretty much have to do the jeans wipe. Hope you aren't wearing a silk suit...