Eco Worrier

Or so we have been told, can this be true?
They use less water than washing your dishes by hand. A simple premise based on research by Dr Rainer Stamminger and his colleges at the university of Bonn in 2003.
The research is based on the European test for dishwashers (EN 50242). The test is conducted with a full load (140 items) of ‘standard’ crockery and cutlery – this does not include saucepans, baking trays or the like.
The AA rated dishwasher used 15 Liters of water and 1 Kwh of energy.
There were 113 test subjects for the hand-washing from various EU countries, the average amount of water used was 103 liters and the average energy used was 2.5 Kwh.

However, the results varied from only 20L and 0.5 Kwh up to 360 Liters and 8 Kwh.
Using best practice you can wash the same amount of crockery using 15 Liters of water heated to 45 degrees and using just 0.8 Kwh energy. But don’t take my word for it try it yourself.

So in conclusion, if you don’t take into account the embodied energy of the dishwasher, you use a AA rated appliance which is full.
It is less energy efficient than washing by hand.

Best Practice;

• Ecover washing-up liquid Leaves no residue, so no rinsing.

• Start with Glasses followed by cutlery and crockery.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 9:48 pm and is filed under News, Inc. kitchen sink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.