Dishwasher vs hand washing dishes

September 5th, 2008 Alex

Are dishwashers green or are you better off manually washing your dishes? The simple answer is that normally if you have a water efficient dishwasher and it is filled with dishes, then it will most likely use less water than hand washing all of those dishes. I have talked about this comparison in a previous post and there are studies that show a dishwasher would use less water. In the study done by Scientists at the University of Bonn, in Germany, dishwashers usually use half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap than hand washing the same set of dishes. If you have a old dishwasher, however, they may not be as efficient as newer ones.  Older dishwashers may also require you to rinse your dishes first before you load them in, but most new dishwashers do a pretty good job and actually do not need any rinsing or scrapping. Even though most people dont, you can actually put your dishes right in after you are done eating.

Many people may think that a dishwasher is not green because they think that it uses a lot of water, and in addition, it also needs electricity to run it, and then also to dry it. Hand washing dishes can vary significantly between different people because there is no correct way to do dishes. Some people tend to let the water run the whole time. There are also different techinques that can vary such  as soaping all the dishes first, then rinse, etc. The main point is that as long as your dishwasher is full, you are using it to its full capacity and it is performing efficiently. Obviously, if you just have a couple of dishes, it is better to hand wash them or to just put them into the dishwasher and wait to fill it up before you start the dishwasher. For some asians, they may not even have this problem because a typical stereotype, yet true, is that asians dont use their dishwashers very often and tend to use dishwashers as a dishrack!

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