5. Wash Dishes More Efficiently
Challenge: Wash Dishes More Efficiently
No matter how you wash dishes, energy is needed to heat and pump the water you use. A dishwasher also needs electricity to run the machine.
What You Should Know
- A dishwasher uses the same amount of water and electricity whether it’s half full or completely full.
- If you use two side-by-side sinks to wash your dishes by hand (one filled with hot, soapy water for washing and the other with cold water for rinsing), you’ll use one-half as much water as you would using a dishwasher.
- Be careful though. Letting the water run continuously while you wash dishes by hand for seven minutes uses approximately 17.5 gallons of water. Meanwhile, even the oldest, most inefficient dishwashers use only 15 gallons per load.
- Eighty percent of the energy consumed by your dishwasher is used to heat water.
- Letting warm water run for seven minutes as you prerinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher will cost you $60 a year.
Easy Things You Can Do
- Use the “energy saver” or “light wash” option. This option uses less water, a shorster rinse cycle, and cold air ot dry the dishes. If your machine doesn’t haveone of these switches, use the shortest cycle possible to get your dishes clean.
- Select the air-dry option, which is sometimes separate from the energy saver switch. Federal law reuires that all new dishwasher have this option, which circulates air with the help of an internal fan to dry the dishes instead of pumping in new, hot air. It takes a little longer, but it can reduce your energy usage by 40%. If your older machine doesn’t have this option, stop the machine before the drying cycle begins and open the door to let the dishes air-dry. Make a note of the time the first time you do this so you know exactly when to stop in in future.
- Always run your dishwasher with a full load.
- Don’t pre-rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher! Today’s detergents are designed to clean the dirtiest of plates. Scrape (don’t rinse) off large pieces of food from your dishes, and experiment with your dishwasher to find out how much you really need to prerinse your dishes and still have them cme out clean–you may be surprised!
- If you have a garbage disposal, always run it with cold water.
Source: 51 Easy Ways You Can Prevent Global Warming (and save money!), by Jeffrey Langholz, Ph.D., and Kelly Turner