Bathroom Hand Dryers Waste 2 Billion Hours Each Year

Posted byboohoodmanPosted inUncategorized

It is one of the most divisive issues of our time: paper towels vs. electric hand dryers. Critics of paper towels point to the fact that we throw out 13 billion pounds of paper towels each year. Critics of electric hand dryers claim that they blow around dirty germ-filled air and are less hygienic. But little is said about the economic cost of all the time spent waiting for hand dryers to actually do their job.

The Handshake Test

The goal of drying your hands is to pass the handshake test. This means your hands have to be dry enough so that when you shake someone’s hand immediately after leaving the bathroom, that person can’t tell that you just washed them. We have all had the somewhat yucky experience of shaking someone’s hand only to pull away with a wet hand afterwards. And it doesn’t just feel yucky: it is bad for public health since leftover moisture on hands is the perfect place for any remaining germs to thrive and spread. Therefore, one of the goals of hand drying is to fully dry hands (duh!).

2 Billion Hours

An academic study on hand washing found that drying your hand thoroughly with a paper towel takes approximately 10 seconds whereas drying with a modern high power electric air dryer takes approximately 20 seconds (and longer for older models). This equates to a 10 second time save for choosing paper towel over air dryers and explains why most people will choose paper towels over electric dryers when given a choice. While 10 seconds doesn’t seem like much time, it adds up. The average person goes to the bathroom 6-8 times per day, meaning the average person would save over a minute per day by using paper towels instead of a hand dryer. Over a year, this person would save somewhere between 6-8 hours of time. Aggregate that across the entire US population, and we would waste 2 billion hours collectively each year if we switched entirely to electric hand dryers. If we value our time at mere $10 per hour, the aggregate economic cost would be $20b per year–significantly more than the $6b in total that we spend on paper towels. So from a purely economic viewpoint, paper towels are more efficient.

Other Key Considerations

  1. Electric dryers help the environment by saving trees used for paper towels.
  2. Since they take longer, electric dryers increase wait times for bathrooms and can increase lines. This means more wasted time and higher economic cost.
  3. Electric dryers use electricity which has an environmental and economic cost, although ~1/5 of the price per use vs. paper towels.
  4. The classic bathroom move of putting your hands under the dryer for 5 seconds then wiping them on your pants or shirt is unhygienic. Paper towels improve compliance with proper hand drying, which improves health.
  5. Paper towels can be used for other purposes, such as cleaning your face or opening/closing the bathroom door.
  6. Electric hand dryers require significantly more upfront cost than paper towels. A modern hand dryer can cost over $500.
  7. Someone has to replenish the paper towels regularly and clear out the waste, which adds to the cost.

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