Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Wash Dishes by Hand

Good news for everyone who hates to wash dishes by hand: It's time to put down the sponge and use your dishwasher! Your dishes will be safer, and it's more eco-friendly, too.

The dishwasher is like a magical kitchen creature: Feed it dirty dishes and you’ll receive sparkling clean ones in exchange. It seems too good to be true, so it must save water to wash dishes by hand, right? It certainly feels like you’d be doing a solid for the environment, but it’s actually more eco-friendly to put down the sponge and use your dishwasher.

Dishwashers are way more water-efficient than your faucet!

It turns out that using your dishwasher is a thousand times better than washing dishes by hand. According to the EPA, the standard flow of a kitchen faucet is 2.2 gallons per minute. That’s a lot of water! You’d use an estimated 27 gallons by washing an entire dishwasher load by hand.

In contrast, ENERGY STAR® dishwashers use no more than 5.5 gallons of water for the entire load (and some of them use as little as three gallons). Even older dishwashers only use ten to 15 gallons per cycle, which is still half as much water as hand-washing. New dishwashers also have sensors that detect how much grime comes off the dishes, using only as much water as required until the water runs clear. You’d have to wash an entire load of dishes in less than 2.5 minutes to compete with that. Find out the surprising things (besides dishes!) you never knew you could clean in your dishwasher, too.

The dishwasher sanitizes your dishes, too

It’s not just about water conservation, either. The dishwasher can heat water to extremely hot temperatures—from 140° F to 155° F—which sanitizes the dishes as they’re washed. Even while wearing gloves, I don’t think I could handle water that hot. These high temperatures mean you can stop wasting time (and water) by pre-rinsing your dishes in the sink. Just give them a quick scrape into the trash to remove excess debris and let the dishwasher handle the rest.

No matter how much you use the dishwasher, though, there will always be items you have to hand-wash—like your cast-iron skillets, that expensive Chef’s knife, and any wooden utensil or cutting board. Here are some more items you should never wash in your dishwasher.

But go ahead and be lazy for the rest of the time: Load that dishwasher up, guilt-free. Just make sure to only run it when it’s full. Since it uses the same amount of water regardless of its contents, you’ll save money by loading it up. Next, make sure you’re not making these mistakes when loading your dishwasher.

Sources:

  • EPA: “Water Efficiency Management Guide”

Taste of Home
Originally Published on Taste of Home

Lindsay D. Mattison
Lindsay D. Mattison is a professional chef and a food writer. After graduating from Cascade Culinary school, Lindsay became the Executive Chef at Jackson's Corner in Bend, OR, from 2013 to 2016. Her genuine passion for food and sustainable food practices led her to find the farmer in herself. She lives in Durango, CO, where she enjoys the trials and errors of small plot farming. Lindsay is currently working on a cookbook that teaches home cooks how to craft beautiful meals without a recipe, tentatively titled "The Art of Bricolage: Cultivating Confidence and Creativity in the Kitchen."