[Greenbuilding] Another Day. Another Challenge....Dishwashers this time!

Reuben Deumling 9watts at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 12:08:46 CDT 2011


On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Matt Dirksen <dirksengreen at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I really think those experiments out there which "proove" that dishwashers
> are more efficient than handwashing are biased. Perhaps I may use a couple
> more gallons of water here and there, but nothing compares to air drying
> dishes on a rack. (not to mention the energy required to manufacture and
> dispose of the thing.)
>

The ones I've looked at closely really are biased. And more often than not
they are also sponsored by manufacturers of - you guessed it. If you look at
how the test protocols are defined, it is obvious that the norm is the
dishwasher and those washing by hand are being asked to mimic the parameters
of what the device needs/performs, rather than the other way around.
Why not instead organize a contest or a series of contests in every town:
who can wash dishes using the least amount of water, soap, hot? The locals
get to decide how to define the parameters. That way it is automatically
more realistic, and if they choose to bias the contest and it shows then the
experiment won't impress anyone. Then have wash-offs, semifinals, etc.
The point I'd make about washing by hand is that it permits--by
definition--a larger range of solutions than the dishwasher. The spread of
water consumption rates for handwashing *has* to be larger than for
dishwashers. Once we recognize this, normalizing hand washing dishes to then
compare it to what dishwashers can do is silly. Much more interesting to
find out from those who manage to wash by hand with (very) little water how
they go about it. And if the 'tests' weren't conceived by dishwasher
manufacturers this might even be where you'd expect to end up.

>
> I also never understood how dishwashers are Energy Star rated and driers
> are not.

That is because all US clothes driers (at least until fairly recently) were
technically pretty much the same - there wasn't much variation across the
population in terms of energy use or efficiency. That may have changed, I
don't know.

> As far as convienance appliances, we find the drier much more necessary
> than the dishwasher. We used to line dry, but because of pollen and deer
> ticks,

We dry our clothes inside during the wet half of the year and on our porch
the other half. Not sure about the pollen and ticks issue. I guess we're
lucky that way.

> we'd end up throwing our "line dried" clothing in the drier afterward
> anyway. The kids slam thru a ton more clothes than they do dishes.

the amount of clothes we in the US toss in the laundry--on average--has
risen with the diffusion of clothes driers. If you think about it, it is
hard to imagine doing--on average--8 loads* of laundry per week per
household if you were line drying them.


*that is the number of weekly loads the DOE assumes the average US hh does.
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