Your dishwasher isn’t just a convenience. It’s also a money-saving machine.
The rising cost of water throughout the U.S. has many of us thinking about conservation. Dishwashing is a good place to start. As a daily chore, dishwashing can use up a lot of water.
The myth of dishwasher waste
Pre-1994 dishwashers weren’t subject to any regulations on the amount of water they could use per load. Once, however, the Energy Star program and other incentives were put in place to control the amount of water a dishwasher uses per load, the amount of water they consumed dropped by at least 10 gallons per load. Newer dishwashers that were built in the last 10 years or so use even less water, consuming no more than five gallons of water per load. The idea that diswashers were wildly inefficent machines stuck around. You would have to be using a 30-year-old dishwasher for that to be true.
Hand washing vs machine washing
According to EnergyStar.gov, a dishwasher that has an Energy Star label costs only about $50 per year to run. A newer dishwasher uses fewer than five gallons of water per load and can reduce the amount of energy you use to heat the water for dishwashing. They have internal, on demand water heaters. Comparatively, washing a sink full of dishes uses about 27 gallons of water per load. That means that over the course of a year, a dishwasher can save you over 8,000 gallons of water if you run it once a day as compared to handwashing one sinkful of dishes per day.
How to make your dishwasher even more efficient
If you choose to go with a dishwasher instead of handwashing, you can save more water by scraping instead of rinsing your dishes before loading the machine. Running the water from the tap to rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher can use up to 2.6 gallons of water per minute. Scraping dishes uses no water and can be helpful when there’s extra-sticky food to remove. Running your dishwasher when it’s full instead of doing partial loads can save water as well.
Choose a smaller dishwasher
While even a full-sized Energy Star dishwasher uses fewer than five gallons of water per load, a compact dishwasher uses even less, around two gallons per load. If you don’t have a lot of dishes, a countertop dishwasher can save you even more water. Compact dishwashers are also simpler to install.