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You've been drying your hands all wrong — here's the most efficient way to do it

joe smith paper towel ted
TEDx Talks

Think back to the last time you washed your hands: When it came time to wipe them dry, how many paper towels did you use?

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According to Joe Smith, if it's more than one, you're doing it wrong.

Smith, a lawyer from Oregon, gave a lightning-quick TEDx talk in 2012 where he demonstrated his fool-proof method for using just one paper towel to dry your hands.

Around the world, humans use roughly 13 billion pounds of paper towels a year. If everyone managed to use one fewer paper towel per day, Smith says, we could cut our yearly paper towel consumption by 571 million pounds.

It's not that hard.

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Step one: Shake your hands 12 times to get the excess water off. 

Step two: Fold one paper towel in half. It allows for interstitial suspension, a fancy way of saying it absorbs better.

Step three: Use one side of the towel to dry one hand, and the flip side for the other.

Shake and fold, it's that simple.

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"You will for the rest of your life remember those words every time you pick up a paper towel," Smith says, before hinting at the next practice he plans to conquer: "Toilet paper."

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