Hand Dryers VS. Paper Towels
Say you’re a high-end facility owner and have renovations to undergo in all restrooms, so you’re looking for new elements that will increase the quality of your restroom but not the budget you’re working with. Now, you’re looking up bathroom accessories that are not only cost-effective but are also modernly-designed, work exceptionally well with given foot-traffic, and are not expected to give you a head-aches many months down the line with operational issues.
Fast forward and you find yourself asking, “Do we go with hand dryers or paper towels?”. For many, it is a question that must be fully analyzed to make the smarter decision. So, are paper towels better than hand dryers or is it the other way around? Let’s discuss further.
Cut your operating costs!
It’s not far-fetched to understand that paper towels end up being more costly to operate than electric hand dryers. In fact, Saniflow’s energy-efficient hand dryers can reduce operating costs by as much as 90% in comparison to paper. According to Restroom Direct, “a hand dryer costs between .02 cents and .18 cents in electricity per dry versus a paper towel that typically costs about 1 cent per sheet.”. A hand dryer is typically more expensive to purchase than a paper towel dispenser, but in the long run, you’d be spending more on bulk orders of paper towels to re-fill each dispenser on a daily basis, depending on your restroom’s foot-traffic.
This makes your return on investment much larger when you opt for the installation of an energy-saving hand dryer and if you’d like to see exactly how much, you’re more than welcomed to visit our Calculator tab where, not only will you see how much money you can save, but also how much saving you’ll do for the environment. On another note, just imagine all the paper towels that will need to take up valuable space in a storage room and have to be re-ordered every so often. Minimize the work, minimize the cost, and minimize wasted space.
No mess, no problem
Ever been to a nice restaurant and enter their modern looking restroom only to find an overfilled trash bin next to the sink? Or worse, on the floor? It’s not very pleasing for the patrons walking in to use the washroom nor is it pleasing to the maintenance team whose job it is to go in everyday a few times per shift to clean it all up, get exposed to dirty remains, re-line the waste basket, and stock more paper just so it can end up the same way again after a busy day. With an electric hand dryer, not only will this hypothetical restroom look much better, but it will completely diminish the work to keep it clean for patrons.
A contact-less opportunity that’s worth taking
The luxury of using a touchless restroom is not really a luxury anymore with the current situation on COVID-19, but a necessity. The reason why is because once you’re done in the stalls, you want to make sure you’re cleaning your hands properly (and if you’d like a great guide on this, visit our previous blog on The Importance of Hand Washing) and then quite literally leave the restroom without having to touch absolutely anything else. While we can’t help the door-situation, we can help when it comes to drying your hands and keeping them clean after you spent 20 seconds washing them to keep bacteria and particles away. Say you use a sensor-operated paper towel dispenser, that’s great up until you need to open up a bin to throw the paper away. Now let’s say you used a touchless hand dryer… doesn’t that sound even more hygienic?
Here’s an awesome fact about our Dualflow® Plus hands-in hand dryer units: they’re embedded with a Biocote® antimicrobial additive in the manufacturing process and it lines the entire unit where ever your hands may come into contact with. Biocote® states that their “scientifically proven technology provides protection against harmful bacteria, mold, fungi and viruses by up to 99.99%” and the best part is that this is technology expected to last a lifetime on the ABS plastic of our Dualflow® Plus electric hand dryers. Say goodbye to walking out of there without thinking you need a second wash!
Green is the new black
There is only one planet we can live on, and it’s our dear Mother Earth. What happens when we don’t take care of it? We’ll be endangering the very environment where our future generations will grow up in. With this, it’s our duty to try our best to invest in products that are “green” and sustainable.Everyone knows trees are cut in order to make paper, but have you ever wondered how many trees are met with this untimely death? The University of Southern Indiana states that “approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the US.”, and to add to this, it is a fact that 2% of total landfill in the US consists of paper towels. Now you’re probably wondering, “Okay, and what about hand dryers? Aren’t they bad for the environment, too?”: a valid question.
Hand dryers emit much less carbon emissions into the atmosphere in comparison to paper. With paper towels, the amount of CO2 emissions is much larger because of the many processes it needs to go through: from the materials phase where fibers must be extracted all the way down to the manufacturing process where water-removing takes place before drying and rolling them out into the desired thickness.
The way we work is much different. Our parent company, Mediclinics, is highly committed promoting sustainability in the manufacturing process by using a combination of new and recycled materials through an established advanced waste stream separation process which diverts more landfill and combustion. In other words, we seek the best way to limit the hurt in our atmosphere from the beginning to end of designing and manufacturing our hand dryers.
In conclusion, we touched on the ways that installation of paper towels versus hand dryers can differ when it comes to cost, maintenance, hygiene, and sustainability. While there are many other things we can talk about, it all comes down to those four points for any facility manager in a predicament where they must make a choice between these two very different methods of hand drying. With this, we hope to have highlighted some of the ways that Saniflow’s eco-friendly high-speed hand dryers could easily trump those pesky paper towels and all the problems that may come along with them. For more information on the wide range of hand dryers we offer, feel free to visit our product pages tab where you can find technical data sheets, certifications, and more!.