The Challenge
Legacy Charter School is a public charter school located in Greenville, South Carolina. With two campuses that support grades K5 – 12, it is a school climate where caring, support and high expectations are the norm. Students are encouraged to focus on academic and physical fitness in preparation for a bright future. A recent renovation of several buildings on the campus caused Barry Bowen, the school’s director of operations, to take a hard look at how to best furnish the new restroom facilities from both a cost and hygiene perspective. Legacy Charter School used paper products prior to the renovations and found it was a lot of work managing the use of paper towels from both a cost and labor perspective. Bowen, also a certified healthcare safety professional, knew the importance of providing a clean environment conducive to learning. Finding a solution that eliminated the expense, waste and labor intensity associated with the use of paper in the restrooms was a priority. The school elected to investigate the idea of installing hand dryers for the renovated areas in lieu of paper towels.
The Solution
In doing a cost analysis as part of the decision to move to hand dryers, Bowen observed that people would use, on average, two paper towels each time they washed their hands. With 1,000 staff and students using the facilities, he made the assumption that people would wash their hands at least four times per day. That equaled a usage of 8,000 paper towels per day at $20 per case, resulting in a cost of $60. He then added in an additional $10 for waste, making it a total cost of $70 per day. With a school year of 180 days, the school’s cost for paper products was approximately $12,600 annually. He estimated that the purchase of high-speed hand dryers could produce a payback in less than one year. With the business case for hand dryers made, the school’s next decision was which manufacturer to select.
One of the buildings on the Legacy Charter School campus housed an original model of a World Dryer hand dryer from a renovation a previous school did 25 years earlier. Bowen was impressed that the equipment was still running, as well as the fact that, when he was doing his research, he saw that a number of large organizations listed World Dryer in their building materials guides. When contacting World Dryer, he was pleased to learn how many types of high-speed hand dryers World Dryer offered in its portfolio. He chose World Dryer’s SMARTdri® Series not only for its speed and energy efficiency, but also for a number of reasons important to a school environment. The shape of the SMARTdri high-speed hand dryers would limit any ability to vandalize the unit. With his interest in health and safety first, he also liked the fact that World Dryer designed the coating on the hand dryers to limit organism growth. From a functionality side, Bowen felt the mechanism inside the unit was strong and offered many options. The school tested two different units and liked the intelligent on/off heating, the variable motor speed, and the amount of ventilation to suit the different age groups of students. Satisfied, the school purchased 18 World Dryer SMARTdri® Series high-speed hand dryers for the renovated facilities.
The Results
In doing the analysis, the results showed that using paper towels in the bathrooms was more expensive in terms of cost, but cost wasn’t the only concern for the school. Being short of square footage, storage and moisture damage was an issue, as well as the risk of having combustible materials housed in an area around students. Additionally, with a belief that every school should do its best to put good choices in front of students, the choice of soap, water and hand dryers in facilities are all options that eliminate the risk of waste, germs and the possibility of fire. And for an institution like Legacy Charter School, that strives to provide the personalized learning experiences and support programs that enable all students to be successful, the savings it is experiencing by choosing hand dryers over paper towels can help achieve those goals.
About World Dryer Corporation
World Dryer, the global leading manufacturer of hand dryers for over 60 years, is the only manufacturer that offers a full portfolio of fast, energy efficient, competitively priced hand dryers designed to fit the individual needs of any business or facility. For more information, visit www.worlddryer.com.