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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

But what are the alternatives?

- Paper towels? Environmentally unsound.

- Washable towel on a continuous roller/spindle thing? Common in past decades, now pretty rare. Requires regular servicing. Expensive? [1]

- Don’t offer hand drying at all? Uncomfortable especially in cold climates. Might discourage people from washing their hands at all.

While I agree they need to be quieter, Hand dryers are still the best technology we have right now.

[1] The British Library still uses these in their washrooms, presumably because of noise concerns with hand dryers.

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Paper towels are recyclable and made out of recycled paper, at least. They are the most hygienic solution out there.

I still see the towel rolls around, they're a good option as well. Maintenance for (esp. public) toilets is never not going to be a thing, but it does require a bit more infrastructure to maintain (= washing out etc). But there's companies that will take care of that.

Not offering hand drying is the worst; drying your hands is arguably even more important than washing them when it comes to hygiene.

Anyway beyond that, fixing the hand dryers is also an option. Use larger but slower rotating fans. Dyson's machines have the problem that they have relatively small, high-speed motors.

They're not recyclable. If they're made from recycled paper, their fibres will be too short, like tissue paper or toilet roll.

On top of that, people might be using it to wipe anything, which could potentially ruin the rest of the recycling.

If you're putting any of that into your recycling, you're doing it wrong.

Also, do not recycle any paper/cardboard with grease or food contamination, especially pizza boxes with grease on, they will also ruin a recycling run.

> If you're putting any of that into your recycling, you're doing it wrong.

Hence the main problem with recycling. No reasonable person can know all the rules about plastics, what kinds of papers, etc. Why can't sorters sort it all out? Because nobody knows what to pre-sort.

Oh, come on. If you're capable of navigating normal life, you're capable of recycling. What you're saying is that you won't spend five minutes absorbing a one page document.

Recology has probably the most complicated arrangement I've had, and, well, this is not exactly rocket surgery:

https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/what-goes-wh...

Nice. What puzzles me is fast-food places with 3 bins (compost, recycling, trash) with these pictures on each -- when instead the pictures should be of the actual containers/wrappers that the restaurant uses. Wouldn't that be more helpful?

"that" in this case is the sort of things one finds in a bathroom. I don't think a reasonable person would think they ought to sort human waste with recyclable paper.

IME paper towels always go into the regular trash. Is this unsustainable? I thought paper was pretty environmentally sound.

For paper producers who replant the trees they log, they're actually sinking carbon so that's good. If they don't replace the trees, no bueno.

They are compostable, not recyclable.

I wish the rolling towel devices were more prevalent. I think I've only encountered them once.

We used to have those everywhere in Vancouver. Unfortunately they got rid of them because teenagers were daring each other to strangle themselves unconscious using those things, and several people were badly injured or died.

Humans...

I feel your pain too well. So many good things we could have in society, but due to a small minority of people ruining it for the rest of us.

Another poster mentioned that their child's high school didn't have any paper towels, which I can only assume is because the kids were wetting them and throwing them around the bathroom ceiling and walls to make them stick, which is something even I (regrettably) took part of as a middle school child.

Maybe I'm filthy, but I've always just patted the back of my shirt unless I'm in a place with clean cloth towels available.

It's not the outside temperature that'd discourage the already apparently slim number of people that do bother to wash their hands. It's water temperature. And if the water is freezing, no drying method will get the average joe to endure the pain of water hitting their hands.

I'm a proponent of cloth rolls. Toilets need regular maintenance anyway. Perhaps an air blower would function as a backup, but I'd honestly prefer drying my hands on my clothes, since in my experience air dryers are either ineffective or in the case of air blade systems so nasty that I don't want to go anywhere near one.

"Paper towels?"

yes, paper towels, perfectly recyclable and hygienic. Allows wiping face/neck as well.

I don't get the discouraging part and cold climates. It requires hot water, but that's it.

Even with hot water, evaporation rapidly cools the water and your hands get cold.

Yeah, it always annoys me when it's impossible to splash water on my face and dry it (perhaps I am a uniquely sweaty mess, I dunno). With most dryers you have to make some sort of cup shape to rebound the air into your face, and that's if you aren't instantly thinking of all the germs blasting out.

See above, learn how to recycle properly, you shouldn't be recycling paper towels.

Appreciate it. So the towels are good for compost and they can't be recycled any longer.

While I was at uni just few years ago all bathrooms had the towel on the roller. The main issue was that by the end of the day the entire roll has been used so you either re-used the same final patch of the towel that everyone already used, or don't dry your hands. Otherwise, great idea.

> - Washable towel on a continuous roller/spindle thing? Common in past decades, now pretty rare. Requires regular servicing. Expensive? [1]

Not true by my experience. I'd say maybe a third of the toilets I use (in Europe) have these cloth rolls.

Paper towels? Environmentally unsound.

I don't see why these paper towels would not be 100% recyclable or that much different to regular toilet paper. Also, what if people would like to wash other body parts that can't be put in an airblade e.g. face?

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, I mean I know why people are but I don't think they should be.

You're forgetting that we have to create paper towels/toilet paper, etc. from trees. And we aren't just talking a few trees, it's a deforestation issue.

Sure we could replant trees, etc, etc, but it still destroys the current eco-systems living there.

As long as they come from farmed trees and wind up composted, they're actually sinking carbon out of the air. Maybe it's not a net win because of the energy used to create them and move them around, but towel itself will lock its carbon in the soil for quite some time.

Live in the cold climate of Canada. I dry my hands by slapping my pants when I walk away from the sink. Then again, I also eschewed towels for the longest time in favor of slapping myself dry after showers

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