Shuffling into the kitchen after a wonderful family dinner, my mom yells after me to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I scrape the food off the plates and stack them next to the sink as I prepare to load the machine. I’ve always had a hard time trusting that the machine will truly clean the really grimy plates, and thus, I rinse off the plates before stashing them away in the strategically designed dish-washing shelves.
As I developed an environmental conscience, I began to question the need for another machine in our everyday lives when we are perfectly capable of doing the job ourselves. I brought this issue up with the kitchen master – my mom – and she claimed that using the dishwasher actually uses less water than what we would use hand-washing the dishes. I accepted this claim for a while and now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really true.
Water conservation is not the only issue here. There are all the materials used to make the dishwasher, the energy used to put it all together, the energy used to run it, as well as the environmental damage done when it’s not disposed of properly.
I came across an informative article on Slate.com that discusses a German study that compares hand-washing versus the machine and it seems as though the results support the use of the machine. Yet, the study does not take into consideration the issues mentioned above.
The conclusion: both methods have their perks. If you choose to hand wash- use the method mentioned in the Slate article. If you use the machine, don’t rinse before hand- just scrape.
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