A typical warm air hand dryer uses electricity for both the fan system and the heating element.  Traditional hand dryers take more than 30 seconds to work fully, and as a result, with each use, they are responsible for just under 3g of CO2 being released from the generation of electricity.

By comparison, the Mitsubishi Electric Wave i01 hands in dryer uses a more efficient design and works in around 10 seconds.  This means that for each use, it is responsible for less than 1g of CO2.

Over the course of a year, in a situation where the dryer is being used 100 times each day, this builds up to 105 tonnes of CO2 emissions for a traditional dryer, and just 35 tonnes from the Wave i01.

While paper do not need electricity to work, their production uses large amounts of energy and results in many trees being cut down.  Each tonne of paper towels requires 17 trees to be cut down and processed.  Over the course of a single year, based on 100 uses per day, paper towels are responsible for some 624 tonnes of CO2 emissions – almost 18 times as much as an efficient hand dryer.