Middlemore is a public hospital, offering hospital and specialist care and a selected range of community and domiciliary services. It is the the largest hospital operated by Counties Manukau Health. The hospital wanted to reduce their waste and they identified paper towels in the bathrooms of their Ko Awatea Building as something that could be eliminated.

The problem

The Ko Awatea Building is a high traffic building with cleaners spending a lot of time stocking, restocking, and removing hand towel waste from the washrooms. Middlemore were aware of the high cost of paper towels and were conscious of the impact paper towel use has on the environment. Paper towels are rarely recycled as they are made with short fibres which while making them more absorbent, also makes them unable to be recycled. Each week the hospital was seeing hundreds of bags of paper towels going to landfill.

The solution

Determined to take actions to reduce waste and their carbon footprint, Middlemore Hospital undertook a trial with Dyson to replace paper towels in their washrooms with Dyson Airblade V hand dryers. Dyson's solution appealed to them over other alternatives due to their:

• Fast drying times
• HEPA filters in all machines
• Performance and product reliability
• Cost to run

“At hospitals, we have some unavoidable waste. We wanted to look at the waste we could avoid," says Alison Howitt, Improvement Advisor Ko Awatea, Middlemore Hospital. "We identified eliminating paper towel from washrooms could drastically reduce our waste to landfill and reduce our carbon footprint.”

The benefits

Middlemore Hospital, since installing Airblade hand dryers has:

• Reduced the number or cleaners' hours spent in this building — these are now being utilised in different areas of the business
• Reduced the number of rubbish bags sent to landfill each year
• Reduced storage requirements for paper towels
• Saved money by not spending on paper towels

After a successful roll-out of Dyson Airblade V hand dryers, the hospital is now looking to implement this solution in other buildings. Next up is a roll-out of Dyson Airblade Wash+Dry for accessible bathrooms. This two-in-one solution means people in wheelchairs can wash and dry their hands at the basin and do not have to touch the wheels of their chair with wet hands.