Thursday, April 14, 2016

"Green" Death?

After using a public restroom, I want paper towels.  I don't want to wait in line at the blow driers, only to have slightly damp hands even after a minute of hurricane.  I can be done in a few seconds with paper towels, and have bone-dry hands to boot.

I'm old enough to remember when such blowers were considered bad for the environment because of the electricity they used, whereas paper came from a renewable resource.

If only blowers are available, though, I like the Dyson Airblades.  They're cool looking, and that blast of air seemingly comes from jet engines.  It's almost like getting a little hand massage :-)

But uh oh, maybe they're not so good for us:
Dyson Airblade hand-driers spread 60 times more germs than standard air dryers, and 1,300 times more than standard paper towels, according to research published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology.
What's a greenie to do?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Also, all bathroom doors should pull open and push out. I hate washing my hands only to have to grab a door handle knowing that most guys don't wash their hands. If I had a towel I would use it to open the door. Great blog btw.

Ellen K said...

Just like Tesla, Dyson is one of those names the upper class liberals (and others admittedly) like to throw around. They will claim, based on nothing but name and price, that products from these companies are better, more efficient, greener, and so on. It is the same with brands such as Starbucks, whose coffee tastes to me like it's made from burned coffee beans, to stores such as Restoration Hardware, which offers you a chance to look edgy and as if you are recycling old hardware but without the fuss and dirt and effort of actually digging around antique stores and thrifts to find them. It's all about show. I learned that when my brother in law decided on Thanksgiving to show a visiting relative their newly remodeled bathroom as some sort of surprise. People are simply weird about labels.

Auntie Ann said...

EK: You're describing a "veblen good", which is a product whose demand increases with price, usually because it is seen as a status symbol. A $1000 purse, a $100,000 Tesla are veblen goods: inherently not much better than far cheaper alternatives, but they tell everyone just how much money you can waste.

Dyson vacs are supposed to have terrible repair records, and the hand dryer problem doesn't surprise me in the least: there's no guarantee that the person who used it before you even bothered to wash their hands at all.