Paper Towel Science

It continues to amaze me that janitors and maintenance personnel universally seem to not understand paper towel dispensers.  Mind you, these are relatively low-tech devices.  One simply opens the cover, places the paper towels into the holder and close the door.  The only real decision to be made and the one that is apparently the most problematical is how much paper to place in the holder.  Here, a basic understanding of the dispenser is critical.

The dispenser is designed to accommodate a certain type of paper towel.  These towels are folded in a manner which allows each towel to be removed from the dispenser while simultaneously "loading" the next towel to facilitate on-going easy dispensing.  To set off this self-loading procedure, the first towel has to be manually fed through the slot, which is generally located at the bottom of the holder.  Once loaded, the action is automatically repeated as a function of the folds in the paper stack.

Assuming the towels are placed into the holder correctly, that is to say, such that the dispensing can happened, the only other requirement is that the holder not be over loaded.  Here is where the janitorial world seems to misunderstand the process.  If the holder is stuffed to its capacity the natural unfolding process is inhibited.  Instead of pulling one towel out at a time the compression of the towels due to the over filling causing the towels to tear and come out in pieces.  In order to get a usable towel when the dispenser is in this condition, one has to force out a hand full of paper towels at once.  This is generally a waste both in time and paper, because in order to get one or two usable towels, ten or fifteen must be yanked out.  The extra unneeded towels are discarded.

Ironically, this waste of towels causes the dispenses to become empty prematurely requiring more frequent attention by the maintenance man, who, no doubt is thinking that by stuffing more towels into the dispenser he will have to service it less frequently.   Quite the opposite result is assured.  Not only does over filling the holder result in the need for more filling, but wastes paper towels which are specifically designed to be dispensed in a manner so as to minimize their waste