American Dryers: Building a Sustainable Future

Going Green with American Dryer

American Dryer has been making hand dryers since 1952, giving them more than 60 years of experience in engineering high-quality products. All the company's products are assembled and serviced in the United States. The company, headquartered in Livonia, Mich., and the Rabahy family that founded it, have received recognition from the U.S. Congress for their contributions to the industry and their community.

American Dryer is contributing to a brighter future in two important ways. Recent innovations have led to the development of Cold Plasma Clean™, which kills germs associated with common illnesses including staph infections and the flu. Their eXtremeAir® series leads the industry in energy efficiency and has been recognized by many environmental organizations as an eco-friendly product.

Cold Plasma Clean Technology

American Dryer's Cold Plasma Clean hand dryer series uses cold plasma, also known as ionized air, to neutralize odors and kill germs, including E. coli, salmonella, staph, MRSA, C. diff, and influenza. This technology offers a more hygienic alternative to traditional HEPA filters found in other hand dryers.

CPC technology has been independently verified to kill germs by two microbiology labs: EMSL Labs, which is accredited in industrial hygiene, and Antimicrobial Test Labs, a lab audited by the EPA and FDA. The dryer was also tested by the Underwriters Laboratory and passed the California Air Resources Board standards. In addition to killing germs, this hand dryer is also very eco-friendly, using only 51 kilojoules per use, while a standard electric hand dryer uses an average of 233 kilojoules per use.

Going Green

The eXtremeAir hand dryer offers businesses the opportunity to offer an eco-friendly hand-drying option in their restrooms. Paper towels are notoriously wasteful, requiring trees, water, and oil to manufacture, and taking up room in landfills after they are discarded. Even recycled paper towels are wasteful and can lead to a messy restroom.

Not content to rest on their laurels, the engineers at American Dryer worked to make hand dryers even more eco-friendly than saving paper towels does by default. Their eXtremeAir line of hand dryers was featured on Discovery Channel's "Building a Sustainable Future" in recognition of its environmentally friendly design.1 The eXtremeAir dryers use as much as 3 times less energy than other energy-efficient hand dryers, using only 22 kilojoules per use.

The eXtremeAir hand dryer has been recognized by GreenSpec® and added to that agency's list of environmentally-friendly products. It is also Greener Product Certified® and helps companies qualify for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) credits, such as:

  • EA Credit 1, for increasing energy performance
  • MR Credit 6, earned for limiting the number of rapidly renewable materials used in construction.
  • IEQ Credit 3.1, for good indoor air quality
  • IO Credit 1, for innovative operations solutions
  • IO Credit 3, which involves tracking operational expenses to understand building performance

1. ExtremeAirHandDryers.com Launches Automatic Commercial Restroom Hand Dryers Featuring American Dryer Hand Dryers PR Web. Accessed September 2015.