Whats better for the environment, electric hand dryers or paper towels?
Dear Cecil: When drying my hands in a public bathroom, I frequently have the choice of an electric hot-air dryer or paper towels. Since the label on the hot-air dryer proclaims it is environmentally friendly and reduces paper towel waste, I generally use it. But the dryer requires no little electricity, the production of which is often detrimental to the environment. So which is less damaging for the planet? — Marcus Evans, Nottingham, UK You think this job is easy? Well, it’s a damn sight easier than it used to be now that I can fob the hard parts off on my hardworking assistants, in this case Una. She came up with a spreadsheet that, as I understand it (she glossed over a few bits in the PowerPoint), reduces all human activity, or anyway all activity involved in electric dryers and paper towels, to its equivalent in kilowatt hours. Her conclusion is . . . well, we’ll get to that. While electric dryers consume energy, a lot of energy goes into drying hands in the industrialized world
