Dishwasher manufactuers would have us believe that using a dishwasher is more environmentally friendly than?

Question

using the sink? Is this just a marketing ploy? What about the electricity used? My hubby wants to get a dishwasher but I want to be more green...

Answer 1

Depends on how you do it. Since most dishwashers require pre or post hand cleaning, if you use your sink or washing bowl properly, it uses much less water and energy.

Recycling the greywater is a good idea too.

Answer 2

Dishwashers are more efficient then most people at washing dishes. They use maybe a gallon and a half per cycle and cycle 4-7 times depending on the washer and cycle selected.

I think what you guys are forgetting is that the hot water you guys are wasting by using alot of water by hands amounts to more than the dish washer wastes running a motor. You can turn off the heated cycle if you want to be more green but please. Use the dish washer.

Even washing in the same soapy water and rinsing seperately uses more water than the washer does.

Then you have to think about what is more green in your area? Using more electricity or more water? In an area with a coal fired plant you are screwed either way because the more water you use the more electricity used to heat the water and the more the water company uses to get the water to your home. If you buy your energy from a wind farm like I do it's MUCH more harmful to use the extra water because my electricity has little to no environmental impact. Don't get me wrong though I refuse to own anything but LCD tvs and all my lights have been replaced with flourescent bulbs. I have a monthly electric bill of about $50 in the summer and that's because it includes the extra fees for renewable sources.

Answer 3

When one is single, and produces just a couple of cups and a plate during the day ~ hand washing is much greener.

However, when you have a large family & produce lots of pots, pans, and other dirty dishes, a dishwasher is much more efficient. Many new dishwashers are energy star rated and consume much less water & electricity than you would believe ~ mine only uses 4 gallons for a complete wash.

The one advantage that a dishwasher has over conventional hand washing ~ is that there are heating elements in the machine that heat the water far beyond what you can get from the tap. This makes the soap & water work much more efficiently than hand washing PLUS sterilizes the dishes. When you have a household of kids suffering from colds & influenza, you learn to appreciate the important of getting those dishes properly sterilized. It also sterilizes baby bottles and dishes which otherwise would have to be boiled in water on the range.

Another advantage, is because you are relying on your dishwasher to sterilize the dishes ~ you can turn back the thermostat on your water heater which is where you find the real energy savings. The water from our taps are set at pleasantly warm, which dropped our monthly bill.

Answer 4

We have a dishwasher which is not plumbed in. I always wash up by hand, but to make it efficient i only do it when there is nothing clean in the house at all, which actually means i never do it because my wife ends up doing it. This is a political issue, because it means a woman is doing the housework rather than a man. If i did it, i believe it would be friendlier than a dishwasher, but as it is, it would mean having to deal with stuff piled up all over the place and possibly decomposing food, flies and the like (though this has never happened to us), so it isn't very friendly to the domestic environment even if it is to the planet. However, dishwashers are supposedly more energy and water efficient.

Answer 5

Get the dishwasher. There comes a point when you have to ask yourself if screwing over your quality of life is really worth it. Do you want to look back realize that you lived your life as if you were in a depression? Think of what you could do with the time you would have spent with your hands in soapy dirty dishwater. Plus dishes get a lot cleaner in the dishwasher. A new one would be very energy effiecient and perhaps more efficient than hand washing. My dishwasher has an energy saver dry option too, which will cycle cool air through the dishes instead of warm, saving electricity. I find that they get just as dry and it saves on cracking of plastic items.

Answer 6

I am very wasteful when I wash dishes in the sink. I use lots of hot water and let it run too long. I probably use 10 times as much water as the dishwasher. But it does save electricity. However, dishwashers do not use that much electricity. The big electricity users are air conditioning, electric ovens, electric heaters and electric stoves. Compared to those items, dishwashers use almost no electricity.

Answer 7

It's good to question the manufacturer's claims, but in this case, it's not just marketing mumbo-jumbo. If you don't pre-rinse and run only full loads, an Energy Star dishwasher (meaning one that the US Environmental Protection Agency has certified as energy- and water- efficient) uses less water and therefore less energy to heat it than hand washing dishes. In fact, Consumer Reports tests shows that if you skip the pre-rinsing (which they showed doesn't improve cleaning in a dishwaster), you'll save as much as 20 gallons per load, or 6,500 gallons per year.

Here's a tip: If you are not going to run the machine right away, use the rinse-and-hold dishwasher feature until you have a full load.

Answer 8

Hi,

it really depends on your dish washing habits. I've shared many appartments with what feels like millions of students from all over the world, and let me tell you, some of them used up to a gallon of water to clean one single cup.

So if you use a lot of soap & water for washing the dishes and then, for example, rinse them separately in clean water, too, you do use much more energy & water than a modern dishwasher.

What they usually use more electricity for than any of us is drying the dishes. But with most of them, you can just cut off the cycle when it comes to drying and open the dishwasher to let the dishes dry by themselves.

Second: One tends to wash little amounts of dishes by hand because the sight of dirty dishes annoys you in the kitchen. So you use water & liquid soap even for small amounts. In the machine you can collect the dishes until it is full, they're out of the way and you don't turn the tab on and off for every little bit.

Plus: They're better for your hands & that saves a lot of cosmetic items, too ;)

See, I'm all for them.

Anna

Answer 9

It`s LESS environmentally friendly than washing dishes by hand . A dishwasher is a convenience , nothing more . It uses more energy than hand washing (the motor and the much hotter water)
although it uses less water than you would with hand washing .

I`d like to hear the manufacturer`s explanation on how it`s MORE environmentally friendly ........ lol .

Answer 10

I read a really good report on Bosch dishwashers at http://www.getwithgreen.com. It was under their Appliance category. I think that the manufacturers do really strive to add functions that lower the energy use. The bosch article discusses a few of those features (e.g. load sensing to limit water usage)