I really like the Purell hand sanitizers because they dispense “juice” without touching anything. By not touching anything you minimize the spread of germs. But Purell is expensive so it is typically used in critical areas (think, babies) while bathrooms use paper towels.
The US uses a huge amount of paper towels each year. The good news is that we’re washing our hands, a lot. The bad news is that we’re using a lot of paper which ends up in a landfill. Here are three steps to minimize the number of paper towels you use each time you wash your hands AND which help keep the bathroom clean.
- Flick your hands 10-12 times in the sink
- This gets rid of extra water on your hands. It takes 5-8 seconds to do this and ensures that you’re not dripping water on the counter and floor when you reach for a paper towel.
- Get one (1) ONE paper towel
- Just one. That’s all you need. Whether it is from a motion sensor machine or a manual dispenser, all you need is one. Use that one paper towel well and it will get the remaining moisture on your hands.
- Use the paper towel to clean up the extra water that previous people left around the sink
- After you’ve dried your hands with the paper towel, use it to wipe up the water on the counter around the sink. Using the towel helps keep the bathroom clean and uses up the rest of the towel.
Doing these three steps will reduce the number of paper towels you use and keep the bathroom cleaner. That helps everyone!
Lead On!
Hand santizers (antibacterial) are bad stuff when used constantly… think triclosan and/or triclocarban. Also unless they contain 60% alcohol they aren’t doing the job and 59% isn’t good enough, but we all know the great American past time is to start out well then cheapen, cheapen, cheapen to reduce cost using fillers, fillers, fillers to fake the customer out, and next thing you know, the solution is worse than the situation itself ever was. Best to simply wash your hands using water at a minimum since the hand sanitizers were invented only for areas where there were no sinks/water, not a permanent solution much like what is found with usage in our society today where people don’t want to walk down the hall to the nearest bathroom to wash their hands.