bakaneko drying one's hands in one of those restaurant type washrooms, the thought suddenly occured to me.. does it waste more resources drying my hands with paper towels (trees) or drying my hands on those blow drying things (electricity-coal/nuclear energy) O_O WONDERS! Akagi Ritsuko I believe, on balance, the blow-dryer edges out the paper towel by a hair, since have to consider the energy and resources used in logging, milling, pulping, paper-production, packaging, shipping, and storage for the paper towel. While the blow dryer just uses electricity to directly heat the air in place. Either side can be abused and made more wasteful. Most people don't bother to use a dryer the whole time, while others always grab more than one towel. On the whole, however, since it averages out to a small fraction of a cent either way, I use a paper towel to get the large water drops off my hands (for which a blow dryer is useless) and a blow dryer to finish drying my hands completely (which a wet paper towel could never do).