Raising bog standards

The condition of your smallest room can be a big deal with some of your customers. Phil Mellows looks at the latest thinking on toilet hygiene

While men will happily do their business up the side of any vertical surface, the increasing number of women who are now visiting pubs mean the smallest room has become a key focus when it comes to maintaining standards.

This is reflected in a growing interest among licensees in more up-market products for toilets. It seems that it is no longer simply a question of being clean, but also looking clean.

According to a recent survey by PHS Washrooms, 72 per cent of independent operators in the hospitality sector say that the condition of the toilets has become more important to them. This compares to 42 per cent of buyers from across all industries.

The research identified some significant trends, including:

• a growing recognition of the importance of toilets and their impact on the image of a business
• a real interest in new products, especially those with a high specification
• where image is important, a need for washroom products to have a more up-market appearance.

PHS is responding to these trends by offering a wider choice and expanding its Platinum range - a collection of products with a high-gloss metallic finish covering sanitary disposal, vending, paper towel and toilet roll holders, air fresheners and soap dispensers.

Now the company has added:

• a toilet seat sanitiser which customers can use to wipe clean, freshen and sanitise the toilet seat
• two hand-dryers for different needs: the high performance Ultradry for busy toilets and the Compact for where the smallest room really is small
• a new modern-styled Easy-Vend washroom vending machine with touch-sensitive buttons and a simple dispense tray that avoids sticky drawers.

"We were very interested in the survey results because they reveal how our customers' needs and priorities are changing over time," said PHS sales director Pearl Muro. "They are more aware than ever that washroom products reflect on their image."

Meanwhile, another just-published report has added to the mass of research fuelling the heated debate around the best way to dry your hands - hot air or paper towel.

Carried out by the independent Environmental Resources Management organisation and commissioned by hand-dryer manufacturer Airdri, the study concludes that hand-dryers have less of an impact on the environment.

Based on the assumptions that it takes an average of two paper towels or 30 seconds under a dryer to dry a pair of hands, the study concludes that using paper towels results in three times as much global warming as using a warm air dryer.

During its life, a drying machine will produce 1.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide compared to an average 4.6 tonnes for paper towels used over the same period. That, apparently, is equivalent to a car being driven 14,500 kilometres!

This might sound surprising at first, but the research takes into account such factors as the trees felled and the energy used to produce paper and dispose of it later. Hand-dryers, in contrast, use a negligible amount of energy.

From the point of view of what they cost the licensee, Airdri asserts that warm air hand-dryers save up to 80 per cent of the cost of supplying and maintaining a washroom with paper or roller towels.

"We have always sought to demonstrate that hand-dryers deliver significant cost savings against paper, especially when cleaning, supply, storage and disposal are taken into account," said marketing and sales manager John Curzon. "Now this new study backs up a lot of other research into the environmental impact of hand dryers."

The other issue is, of course, hygiene. A quick search on the internet suggests the jury is pretty much still out on this, with competing claims flying around cyberspace.

John, however, considers the matter "finally resolved" with the publication of an independent report by the Mayo Clinic last year. "This concluded that cloth towels, paper towels and hand-dryers demonstrate no statistically significant differences in removing bacteria from hands," he said.

Now you might jump to the conclusion that drying your hands in hot air is more hygienic because, after all, you're not touching anything but clean air. But it ain't necessarily so.

A couple of studies have suggested that when you rub hands under the hot air, bacteria is propelled out of the jets and increases the number of bacteria in the washroom.

An additional complication may be that hot air dryers take longer to dry hands than towels and because only one person at a time can use the drier others may become impatient and wipe their hands on their clothing or a handkerchief - we've all been there.

Still another researcher found that towels were better at removing micro-organisms. While hand-dryers increased bacteria on the hands by 162 per cent, paper towels decreased bacteria levels by 29 per cent.

The performance of cloth towels here obviously depends on a pub's ability to keep them laundered and replenished. As Airdri again points out, there is always a risk of infection from a damp and dirty roller-towel, plus "pollution from detergents used to wash them".

Laundry costs mean that you will probably be paying about twice as much for cloth towels as you will for the paper variety.

Paper towels, however, have their own downside as a local pollutant. As the evening wears on you might find customers get less accurate at throwing used towels into the bin. The bin will also fill up - although you should really assign a member of staff to check the toilets on a strict rota, say once an hour.

On the other hand, if you'll excuse the pun, there are aesthetic considerations. A hand-dryer has to be effective well within that half-a-minute or customers are likely to get fed up and go back to their drink - wiping their hands down their shirts in an unattractive manner on their way back through the bar.

Another factor is noise. If your toilets are close to a part of the pub where people are eating and drinking, a loud roar, sometimes accompanied by a rattle, every time the door opens can be annoying.

Going back to the question of image, you might have noticed that the top hotels favour individual cloth hand towels that are immediately thrown away - quite often there is also a flunkey to give them to you, as well.

You may not be able to afford this, but sometimes a nice, clean proper hand towel adds a personal touch that people appreciate, as long as you launder and change them frequently.

It is clear that toilets say as much about your pub as the quality of the cask ale, the chilled white wines and the al dente vegetables. If you want to do the best for your customers, why not ask them what they prefer?