This learning unit reviews the environmental and societal value of reviewing the restroom specification more carefully. It will show that the choice of hand-drying method can have a sizable impact on green building design and energy-efficient operations, as well as side benefits to public health, occupant comfort and efficient operations. Comparisons are also made between warm-air and high-speed hand dryers —including hands-under and hands-in designs —as well as between electric dryers and paper methods.

Increasingly, architects are making strong recommendations for clients on the choice of hand-drying equipment, says Marlyn Zucosky, IIDA, director of interior design for Princeton, N.J.-based architecture firm JZA+D. “For office buildings, we tend to recommend touchless, high-speed hand dryers, which are seen as convenient for users and also easy to maintain for the property manager,” says Zucosky, whose practice is heavy on tenant installations and workplace design. “They can also contribute to greener, cleaner building practices.”

On a global level, the impact of hand-drying selection could have a significant environmental impact in aggregate. According to estimates cited in Crain's,¹ hand dryers are in place in about 10 percent of nonresidential restroom locations in the United States. Given that there are millions of commercial and institutional buildings, one can infer that millions of locations today are buying and disposing of bulk paper for restroom operations. “This is very different from Europe, where warm-air hand dryers are far more prevalent,” says Todd Clarke, director of specifications, Dyson Inc. “For U.S. buildings, a hand dryer may be a small part of a facility's footprint, but across the whole market it can have a very big impact.”

The choice of hand-drying method can impact building waste reduction and disposal energy, including that for paper trash from restrooms. The LCA impacts of installed equipment and bulk consumables like paper and soap must also be considered. Images and design study courtesy of Dyson Inc.

 

Industry Standards

Even in one building, the numbers are surprising. As an example, says Clarke, at a college if each student washes his or her hands once per day using two paper towels, over a 200-day school year the consumption of paper towels easily reaches into the millions. (If the student body is 4,000 undergraduates, the total use would be 4,000 x 2 towels x 200 days, or 1.6 million towels.)

For reasons of client preference and environmental prerogatives, architects are lending more attention today to hand-drying methods and product review.

The potential change in choice of restroom equipment must be reviewed against a backdrop of codes, standards and regulatory jurisdiction. Overall there is little focus by standard-setting groups on hand dryers. For example, a new or renovated building may achieve the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED® Platinum certification regardless of the choice of hand-drying method. In addition, there is no established benchmark for certification under LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC); for that reason, a reduction in waste may be good for sustainability but it will not necessarily be awarded points toward any certification level.

On the other hand, the choice of hand-drying method can have a valuable contribution to LEED's Energy & Atmosphere (EA) credits, including Prerequisite 2 – Minimum Energy Performance, as well as EA Credit 1 – Optimize Energy Performance, which is required for all buildings that are LEED certified. In addition, the choice of hand-drying solution can impact the LEED category of Materials & Resources (MR), including the MR Prerequisite 1 & 2, the credit for Sustainable Purchasing: Ongoing Consumables (MR Credits 1.1 - 1.3), and Solid Waste Management: Ongoing Consumables (MR Credits 7.1 – 7.2).

Last, there is a new credit category in upcoming versions of LEED for using products that have undergone a published LCA.

What's left out? Related benefits of waste reduction and disposal energy, including those for paper trash from restrooms. The LCA impacts of installed equipment and bulk consumables like paper and soap are omitted, too. Social sustainability measures, such as universal design, in the drying method selected. User comfort and acoustical issues, such as the noise of electrical equipment operations. Plus energy impacts, such as the comparative operations energy use by warm-air vs high-speed dryers. And much more.