Really good questions, and ones that PCC had to ask before making the switches.

Regarding the question about the environmental impacts of electric hand dryers:

Modern-day hand dryers, such as the Mitsubishi Jet Towels that we have installed, use far less energy and materials in comparison to paper towels — even paper towels made with recycled-content paper — and have much less of an environmental impact over the course of their use.

That is, the manufacturing, shipping, and regular use of a hand dryer uses less energy and resources than the ongoing manufacturing and shipping of paper towels and those paper towels’ packaging. (The difference is even greater if the paper towels are dispensed via a touch-free style towel dispenser.) The hand dryers also save money (they paid for themselves after 3 years), which helps us tackle other projects to better serve the college.

The difference in energy use is pretty sizable: The average embodied energy usage per single paper towel is 0.0097 kW. 10 seconds of a Mitsubishi Jet Towel uses 0.0001 kW of energy, which means that I would have to run one of these hand dryers for 16 hours and 10 minutes for me to match the energy use that goes into one paper towel.

There’s more that goes into paper towels than just energy, though. On average, one paper towel dispenser on campus would use up an amount of paper that is the equivalent of a tree that is 26 feet tall and 5.5″ around per month. Add up the number of paper towel dispensers that have been replaced, and we can start to see how intensive that is, even with our policy on recycled-content paper products. There’s also the need to dispose of all those single-use paper towels, which would ultimately be trucked out to our region’s landfill in Columbia Ridge, 150 miles east of Portland.

As for the second question about electric hand dryers’ safety:

The collective research demonstrates that properly washing our hands has waaaaay more to do with our exposure to germs — and whether we expose others to them — than the method we use for drying our hands. Making sure our hands are totally dry makes a big difference since that’s the easiest way to spread stuff, though, so let the hand dryer do its thing and wait until yoru hands are fully dry. There have been a number of studies on this topic, and I should note that it’s important to consider what the collective conclusion is.

(For the curious folks, the one exception in which the difference is worth considering is in a clinical facility, such as a hospital, where the extremely heightened level of pathogens and bacteria, coupled with patients’ extremely compromised immune systems, makes paper towels the safer bet.)

I’ll keep the info about our cleaning system much briefer:

The lotus PRO’s ozone cleaning system is an extremely effective cleaner — more effective and faster-acting than bleach — and it’s much safer for people and the ecosystem by avoiding the heavy use of toxic chemicals. The ozone-infused water used for cleaning eventually reverts back to just water and oxygen. It has been tested by multiple third-party labs that have verified its antimicrobial effectiveness as a cleaner and sanitizer. It’s used in many health care facilities, schools, hotels, and businesses around the world, and we’re proud to use it here. It’s essentially a win-win: It’s better at killing germs, and it doesn’t present problems for indoor-air quality or water quality. Not only that, but it prevents us purchasing, shipping and disposing of containers from 170 gallons of cleaner annually – which results in a big reduction in scope III-related emissions like purchasing and waste.

The health of everyone who comes to our campuses to study, work, or simply visit is extremely important to us, and we won’t compromise that. Both electric hand dryers and the lotus PRO system are safe, environmentally preferable to other options, and save the school money in the long-run.

Feel free to email if you’d like to chat more. I am unable to link or provide attachments here.

A similar question arises with the new cleaning chemicals. how do they rate with sanitation and disease control. As an in home caregiver, this is something I take seriously. Taking something home from school could have drastic effects on my clients.