Paper Towels

This week Otago Polytechnic have launched a joint initiative with the Dunedin City Council to compost paper towels.  The trial will be re-evaluated after 3 months.  Paper towels can't be recycled with standard paper recycling as they are wet and also they are a different quality paper (often already recycled).   This is an exciting initiative for the polytechnic.  Remember if you are on campus to reserve the paper towel bins for only papers towels.  Any other rubbish contamination would jeopardise the initiative.  

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And the relevance to this blog audience, who are primarily off-campus?

Whether you are based on-campus or off-campus, as most of you are, this is a great initiative and it could be timely to look into for your paper towel disposal methods at your own workplace.  In veterinary clinics hand washing and drying, as well as table wiping, is far more frequent  due to the nature of the work.  This can generate significant amounts of rubbish if paper towels are used.

With the launch of the Otago Polytechnic initiative the challenge for you and/or your workplace, whether it be a veterinary clinic or another work place, is to  encourage you to undertake an evaluation of the method of hand drying and look for improvements and efficiency's.  

For hand drying:

• What do you use to dry your hands?
• What is most effective?  Remember completely dry hands is the aim.  
• Maybe you share a hand towel - is this suitable?  Are there any health and safety considerations?  The considerations may depend on the particular workplace.
• In a small workplace everyone might have an individual towel - does this work?  Could it work for your workplace?  Who washes the towels?  When are they washed?  What are they washed with? Is it a full load?  How are they dried?
• Perhaps you use one of those towel dispensers that rolls up the used towel.  As I understand it these are less and less available as an option and I imagine they were pretty energy intensive in terms of collecting them, dismantling, washing and putting back together.  
• Perhaps you use hand dryers.  How effective and efficient are these?  Could they be replaced with a more efficient type that actually dries your hands?
• Paper towels. Are they bleached or unbleached?  Where are they sourced from?  How many are used? How are they disposed of? Can they be composted in your area?  
• If you use paper towels, how can we effectively reduce the number used?  You need 2 or 3 to dry your hands effectively right? Have a look at this TEDtalk which begs to differ. 
• Evaluate the financial cost of each option - is the option also cost efficient?.   

For table wiping:

• What do you use?
• If its paper - is it bleached or unbleached?  Where are they sourced from?  How many are used? How are they disposed of? Could they be composted with the disinfectant you choose to use?
• Could something reusable like a CHUX cloth be used and then washed?  
• What is the energy and time cost of washing and reusing vs paper towels?  What is the financial cost differential?  Is there any risk of residual contamination on a reused cloth?
• Does the disinfectant used have any environmental risks which preclude washing a cloth? 
• If the disinfectant used does have environmental risks, refer to this blog post.  

By using these questions as a starting point you can start reviewing the cost of what you use currently vs other options  both financially, environmentally and also in terms of health and safety and time efficiency.

The best option is likely to vary between workplace and region.  The key is to work out the best option for the specific situation considering all these factors: cost, safety, environment, source of the initial product, size of waste stream.  I am sure you can think of more.  

We look forward to hearing your thoughts.  If anyone wants to share an evaluation they have completed on this or another area of their workplace (doesn't need to be a veterinary clinic) we would appreciate the opportunity to showcase (and credit) your work/story.