1 Should Smith Throw in the Towel? Hand Dryers v Paper Towels Kim Wilson December 5, 2007 Smith College EVS 300 David Smith2 Abstract: Smith College currently uses recycled brown paper towels in its restrooms. We are examining whether hand dryers would be more economical and environmentally friendly. After finding the college’s current paper towel usage and interviewing several individuals on campus, we were able to calculate the energy and cost of one person drying their hands one time. Three products were examined; recycled paper towels, the Lexan a “normal” hand dryer, and the Xlerator a “green” hand dryer. We found that Xlerator Hand Dryers produced by the Excel Dryer company are the most energy efficient and economically efficient product. Recycled paper towels which Smith College is currently using were found to most energy intensive product and to approximately cost the same as a normal hand dryer per use. These findings will hopefully encourage change of recycled paper towels usage to the use of Xlerator hand dryers in the Smith College restrooms. Introduction: Currently the Smith College campus uses brown recycled towels in its restrooms for hand drying. Because they do not require bleaching and are made from recycled materials these paper towels are the most environmentally friendly paper products on the market. However they still create waste which will be disposed of in a land fill. Hand dryers do not produce any waste from the action of hand drying, but expend energy instead. This energy usage releases greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Because drying one’s hands is a mundane daily task it is something that people do as second nature without much, if any thought. A majority of tasks which cause environmental harm such as, leaving the lights on in a room or throwing away an3 aluminum can are done without any thought. Because of the large amount of waste produced by paper towel use, would hand dryers be better for the environment? Or do hand dryers use to much energy? To compare the environmental degradation produced by each product, we had to conduct a product life cycle analysis. A product life cycle analysis considers everything needed to make a product and maintain a product throughout its life as well as the harm of disposing of a product. Materials and energy used, waste and pollution generated are all considered. It is environmental full cost accounting.1 The only way to see the full impact of both hand dryers and recycled paper towels is to consider the entire life span of each product. However not all products are created equally. The Xlerator hand dryer a “green” dryer, and the only one currently on the market. It is both LEED and Green Spec certified. Green Spec is Building Green’s product information service, which contains information about environmentally friendly building products.2 LEED is a national ranking system which helps in the designing, construction, and certifying of green buildings.3 It has received acclaim from the Wall Street Journal, NBC, and the Environmental Building News, because it dries hands in a third of the time of a normal hand dryer, while using less energy.4 The environmental costs of drying ones hands could be greatly reduced by this product. Methodology: 1 Portney, Paul. “The Price is Right: Making Use of Life Cycle Analyses”. Issues in Science and Technology. Winter 1993 -94, pp.69-75. 2 http://www.buildinggreen.com/menus/ 3 http://www.usgbc.org/ 4“What’s new”www.exceldryer.com4 Hand Dryer Research: In order to find the cost of hand dryers we had to research the energy needed to run a hand dryer, as well as the materials and energy needed to produce one. This required going to websites of several hand dryer companies. After examining our options we decided to concentrate our research on one hand dryer company, Excel Dryers. We did this for three reasons; one, they produce the only “green” hand dryer on the market, the Xlerator, two, they a fairly local company located in East Longmeadow Massachusetts, and finally because both dryers are produced by the same company we can assume that the production methods for each type of dryer are similar. We decided to compare the Xlerator to the least expensive model the Excel Dryer Company produces, the Lexan. On Campus Research: Because the realm of our project was concerned with Smith’s paper towel use, and the possible benefits to Smith of switching to electric hand dryers we had to find out Smith’s current paper towel usage. Diane Benoit, Manager of Building Services, was able provide the information about Smith College’s monthly paper towel expenditures. The towels are ordered from the Georgia Pacific Paper Company, and are made of 100% recycled materials; a combination of post and pre consumer content. Interviews: On April 22, 2005 we interviewed engineering professor Donna Riley. She teaches several environmental engineering classes such as “Chemical Engineering Principles”, “Physicochemical Processes in the Atmosphere”, and “Engineering and Global Development”. She is currently teaching about life cycle analysis in one of her5 classes, and was able to advise us on how to refine ours. Under her advice we decided to concentrate our report on the energy needed to dry ones hands with each product. The material costs for these products were not as important in her opinion, because of the large supply of recycled paper available in the market, and the materials need to make a hand dryer are also recyclable. She provided us several articles about life cycle analyses. This interview provided us with a more focused direction on where to take our research and a better way to compare the environmental impacts of hand dryers and paper towels. On April 25, 2005 we interviewed Brett McGuinness, Assistant Manager of Building Services. Brett was able to provide some basic information that we needed for our project. Mainly the number of academic bathrooms on campus, 300 -350, and how much Smith pays for energy, 5 cents per kilowatt hour. He also supplied information about the college’s past experiences with hand dryers. He said that the college had priced hand dryers before, and was interested in the Xlerator. In his opinion hand dryers would never be put into every bathroom on campus, because of cost and the fact that there are bathrooms on