If you’re an environmentally conscious consumer, you’ve probably heard that today’s highly efficient dishwashers use less energy and water than traditional hand-washing techniques.
If you’re an environmentally conscious consumer, you’ve probably heard that today’s highly efficient dishwashers use less energy and water than traditional hand-washing techniques.
While that’s true in most cases, there’s one manual washing technique—the two-basin method, in which dishes are soaked and scrubbed in hot water and then rinsed in cold water—that is associated with fewer greenhouse gas emissions than machine dishwashing.
That’s one of the surprising findings of a new study from University of Michigan researchers that includes a list of tips for greener dishwashing. The study was published online Feb. 12 in the journal Environmental Research Communications and is the result of a collaboration between U-M researchers and Michigan-based Whirlpool Corp.
The study also found that:
- Avoiding pre-rinsing and deselecting the “heated dry” setting can significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with machine dishwashers.
- The common “running tap” method of manual dishwashing used more energy and more water than any other dishwashing method tested.
- If by-hand dishwashers switched from the running tap to the two-basin method, they could reduce associated greenhouse gas emissions by about two-thirds.
Read more at University of Michigan
Image Credit: University of Michigan
