Green Ideas

They probably are greener; but I don't think people will go for it. I would settle for mandatory recycling of paper towels. There's no need for them to go into a landfill when all they are is organic material.

Using paper towels to dry your hands is far more hygienic than using electric hand dryers which actually increase the amount of bacteria on hands and can spread cross contamination in public washrooms, according to an independent scientific study. The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Westminster, London, measured the number of bacteria on subjects’ hands before washing and after drying them using three different methods —paper towels, a traditional warm air dyer and a new high-speed jet air dryer. They’re short term loans and they’re sanitary—and the newer models, at least, are fast. Old hand dryers required as much as 45 seconds to dry your hands (a hard sell compared to paper towels that wipe away water in a few seconds). But newer, hyperefficient dryers blast your hands dry in as little as 8 to 10 seconds. As for keeping your hands germ-free, a 2000 study from the Mayo Clinic found no difference between air dryers and paper towels at removing bacteria from wet hands.