This debate comes up more often than you'd expect when NZ businesses are fitting out or refurbishing their bathrooms. Hand dryers seem like the obvious modern choice — no restocking, no waste, no paper towel bin. But in food service environments, the picture is more complicated.
What NZ Food Safety Guidance Actually Says
The New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) guidance on handwashing facilities states that hand drying materials should be single-use — meaning paper towels, not cloth towels or shared hand dryers. This guidance flows from the NZ Food Act 2014 and is reinforced in the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Food Safety guidelines for registered food businesses.
The underlying reason is straightforward: reusable or shared drying surfaces (cloth towels, hand dryers that people touch) can harbour and transfer pathogens. Paper towels eliminate this risk because they're used once and discarded.
This doesn't mean hand dryers are explicitly prohibited by regulation — the Food Act requires businesses to have adequate handwashing facilities but doesn't prescribe the exact drying method in all cases. However, your Food Control Plan (FCP) or National Programme will typically specify hygienic hand drying, and your local EHO will assess this against current guidance.
The Hand Dryer Problem in Food Environments
Beyond the regulatory preference, there are practical food safety concerns with jet air dryers specifically:
- Aerosolisation — high-velocity hand dryers disperse water droplets and bacteria into the surrounding air. Multiple studies have found significantly higher bacterial counts in the airspace near jet dryers compared to paper towels. In a food preparation environment, this is a contamination risk.
- Ineffective drying — hands that aren't fully dry after washing are more likely to spread bacteria on contact. Many people don't stand at a hand dryer long enough for complete drying. Paper towels dry hands effectively in under 10 seconds.
- Touch surfaces — standard warm air dryers require pressing a button. That button is touched by unwashed hands as people approach it. Paper towel dispensers (particularly lever or auto-feed models) minimise this contact.
Where Hand Dryers Are Acceptable
In customer-facing bathrooms that are not directly adjacent to food preparation areas — a standalone customer bathroom in a retail environment, for example — hand dryers are generally acceptable. The regulatory concern is highest in:
- Staff bathrooms where food handlers wash their hands before returning to the kitchen
- Handwashing sinks directly within food preparation areas
- Any facility where inadequate hand drying could directly lead to food contamination
If you're uncertain about your specific situation, your local council's EHO can advise. Get the guidance in writing — it's useful documentation for your FCP.
Paper Towel Options for NZ Food Businesses
Not all paper towels perform the same. For commercial food environments:
- Interleaved (Z-fold or C-fold) paper towels — most common in commercial settings. Individual sheets, contained in a wall-mounted dispenser. Hygienic because you only touch the sheet you're taking.
- Centre-pull paper towel rolls — useful for handwashing sinks in kitchen areas. Pulls from the centre, reducing contact with the roll exterior. High capacity.
- Roll paper towels with dispensers — common in customer bathrooms. Lower cost per sheet but lower hygiene if not in a covered dispenser.
Ply and GSM matter for commercial use. Single-ply towels often require two or three sheets to effectively dry hands, which increases actual usage and cost. 2-ply towels at an adequate GSM (typically 40gsm+) dry hands in one or two sheets and often work out cheaper per hand-dry.
Calculating Paper Towel Usage
For budgeting and stock level purposes, a rough commercial estimate is 2–3 sheets per handwash. A food business with 8 staff washing hands every 30 minutes across a 10-hour day is looking at roughly 480–720 sheets per day from staff handwashing alone, before customer bathroom usage.
Interleaved paper towels in NZ are typically sold in cartons of 3,000–5,000 sheets. At the usage rate above, a single location goes through roughly one carton per week on the low end. Budget accordingly — running out of paper towels in a food business bathroom is both an operational problem and a compliance issue.