Why are electric hand dryers the best solution for drying hands in shopping centres?

1 July 2022, in a large shopping centre in Madrid. Nine o'clock in the morning. On the first day of the summer sales, we saw long queues at the entrance of the main stores in the centre as shoppers crowded in to take advantage of the offers.

High temperatures continue to affect the whole country and especially Madrid. Thermometers continue to set record temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius, and today will be no exception. As usual, this Friday will also be an extremely hot day in the capital of Spain.

Today for the bars and kiosks in the shopping centre, as in the last few days of the heat wave, it will seem like August even though it is the beginning of July. Shopping centre visitors will need to stay hydrated more than ever and this will certainly result in an even greater than usual number of visitors to the public toilets.

Do you remember Juan Yuste, the person in charge of the facilities of this shopping centre? He featured in our May post "Why you have to pick up a calculator to dry your hands in a public bathroom". Well, if you remember, at that time Juan was thinking about using electric hand dryers or paper towels for hand drying in the toilets. Our facility manager came to the conclusion that electric hand dryers were much more suitable and beneficial for the shopping centre he managed for three main reasons: economic savings, respect for the environmental and hygiene. Let's look at these three benefits in greater detail:

Benefit 1: Economic savings

Fortunately, as we saw in May, Juan decided to go for hand dryers rather than paper towels because the operating costs of electric hand dryers were far lower than the costs of using paper towels. In other words, we found that it is much more cost-effective to dry hands with a state-of-the-art electric hand dryer than with paper towels (€435/year with an electric hand dryer compared to €4320/year for paper). Imagine, if with a hand dryer in 1 bathroom the savings were €3885 per year, in the 30 toilets that the centre has, the savings would be spectacular. We are talking about approximately €120,000 per year. Juan Yuste is, therefore, reassured that, despite the fact that a large number of people are expected to use the shopping centre's public toilets this summer, the operating costs, in terms of drying the hands of users, are not going to skyrocket.

The economic savings are, therefore, the first great benefit of using electric hand dryers in a large shopping centre, where there are large numbers of people, especially during the sales period.

Benefit 2: Sustainability and respect for the environment.

On an environmental and sustainability level, the use of hand dryers has many advantages and is the best alternative to the use of paper towels. Electric hand dryers reduce paper consumption and thus contribute to biodiversity conservation. According to Greenpeace, 40% of the wood harvested for industrial use is used to make paper. Some 15 billion trees are lost each year. This is in addition to the loss of habitat for protected species, the disappearance of endangered flora and the damage this causes to the balance of the water cycle.

In addition, paper manufacturing represents a huge source of pollution and has a major negative impact on the environment. By way of example:

- Large amounts of water and energy are needed to manufacture paper. 60% of paper manufacturing is energy.

- Paper industries are on the list of industries that emit the most greenhouse gases, around 3.3 kg of CO₂ equivalent for every kilo of paper.

- Paper mills are among the biggest water and air polluters.

- Chlorine, which is highly polluting and harmful to human health and the environment, is used in one of the main stages of paper production, pulp bleaching.

- The paper industry has a large carbon footprint because of its intensive use of fossil fuel-consuming means of transportation.

For all these reasons, the most appropriate solution for a shopping centre to be environmentally friendly is the use of electric hand dryers. These electric devices, designed for hand drying, improve hygiene in a more ecological, sustainable and cost-effective way. It is true that drying hands with paper towels is still effective. However, their constant use increases the daily amount of waste in the toilets and their manufacture, as we have just seen, significantly harms the environment. Therefore, their use is not a sustainable solution and it is much better to use electric hand dryers.

To summarize, we can therefore say that any facility that uses electric hand dryers will be making an important contribution to the preservation of the planet.

Benefit 3: Hygiene.

Cleanliness and hygiene in shopping and leisure centres is a service of prime necessity, as they are frequented by large numbers of people. A good cleaning service in a shopping centre in general, and in the public toilets in particular, is very important for customers to feel comfortable and thus be able to focus on their main activity, which is shopping and enjoying the facilities.

In the same way that floors, walls, mirrors, bathroom accessories, etc. must be clean and shiny, the air in the bathroom must be free of particles that can be harmful to human health.

It is for this reason (hygiene inside the bathroom) that the new generation hand dryers from Mediclinics incorporate the latest technologies in air purification. Without going any further, in our post "Are HEPA filters a safe solution for COVID-19?" we explained what a HEPA filter is and how this type of high-performance filter ensures a cleaner and more hygienic toilet environment against viruses, bacteria, dust, mould, smoke, etc. We told you that HEPA filters are able to reduce the allergens found in the air of public toilets, thus ensuring that the air with which we dry our hands is totally clean and free of particles that are harmful to our health.

But these HEPA filters, which are also used in operating rooms, aeroplanes, pharmaceutical laboratories, etc., are not the only technology used to improve air cleanliness and hygiene. Other technologies such as ionizers, antimicrobial additives and touch-free hand dryer actuation are also applied to our brand's hand dryers to give even more added value to our appliances.

In our post "HEPA filters and hand dryers, what else do we need?" in March 2021, we explained what an ionizer is and how they significantly reduce microorganisms and airborne particles. We saw that ionizers, technologically, are a good solution for air purification and that if, in addition, they were used together with a HEPA filter, the combination could not be more satisfactory in terms of obtaining pure air, free of impurities and microorganisms, especially in closed and poorly ventilated rooms, such as public toilets in a shopping centre. 

It is therefore clear that in terms of hygiene, hand dryers are up to the task and provide a high level of assurance for people's health at all times.

To sum up, given everything we have told you in this article, we can say that the latest generation of hand dryers by Mediclinics help to create a cleaner and more hygienic toilet environment, save costs and are much more environmentally friendly than the use of paper towels, especially in shopping centres, which have high foot traffic in the toilets.

Juan Yuste can sleep soundly because he has once again made the right decision in opting for electric hand dryers.

Germán Muñoz
Marketing Director
Mediclinics S,A