I disagree with the energy use you don’t necessarily have to use hot water. And the costs differ if water is heated with gas. To gloss it over that proves your conclusion to be moot. Hand washing for us is a big cost saver on energy
Right? It feels like there are so many tools in our day-to-day life that we've taken for granted for decades upon decades in a way that modernity just *assumes* we know how to optimally use them... but we don't!
The time and effort savings alone makes it worth it. I've had people argue with me that they can finish washing the dishes by hand faster than my dishwasher's 2 hour cycle. I counter by telling them that I only spend time loading and unloading the dishwasher. The dishwasher's working time isn't using my own time. I am free to do other things while it works.
@@MNbenMN I will say, having a "natural mandatory break" on the kind of "medium length trip" where you need to charge _once_ and can plan for it can be kinda nice. Get a gas station coffe and chill out But that's of course driving where there's infrastructure for it, and not going along a vast desert highway or what have you (I'm from Sweden, we don't have a lot of those) Though that's where the _actual_ superior mode of transportation would be a nice option: TRAINS
I washed dishes by hand throughout college (no dishwasher available). When I moved into a place with a dishwasher, I used it avidly, but always wondered if I was wasting water because I didn't own enough dishes to fill a full load. It's good to know for certain that I have not been wasting water as I absolutely would be hand washing for more than 4 minutes.
@@rogerwilco2 yeah that kinda confused me too. We have both a dishwasher and we hand wash just because we have a ton of dishes and we always just fill up the sink like 1/3 of the way and wash everything in there. I also noticed in the video that they werent doing that and just let the water go down the drain which really just confused me
@@rogerwilco2I’m quite convinced that the participants of any dishwasher vs handwasher comparison are running the water the whole time they handwash and thus favoring the dishwasher. I see the same thing happening when people wash their hands, and I wonder who taught them that. But then I see water constantly being ran like that in movie and tv shows…
@@hynnow18for letting water run when you wash your hand (especially in public space), there are reasons (if they don't close the sink using paper towel that reason is in the trash)
@@rogerwilco2 Most people will fill at least one basin partway with water, usually soapy water, which is gonna be at least two gallons even if you're being conservative on a small sink. That means you have two minutes of running the water to rinse the dishes, assuming you don't pre-rinse or have any need to top off the basin, before you're using as much water as the dishwasher. There's definitely a tipping point for loading in too few dishes for the dishwasher to be worth it but most people understand that a single plate would be a waste.
Did you watch this video, and are frustrated because you live in a place without a dishwasher, or without a place to even install one? Look up a countertop dishwasher! I got a Faberware personally. It requires no installation, fits on my counter without issue, takes maybe 5 minutes to load, and saves me dozens of hours every week. I used to have no choice but to hand-wash for 10 years, and I hated it. Getting a countertop dishwasher was a game-changer. It was literally one of the best purchases I've ever made.
1. To fully compare efficiency, also compare the amount of labor involved. The main reason why people buy dishwashers is to reduce the time spent on a repetitive & boring chore. I wanted to write "You had me at time-saving" but it wasn't mentioned. 2. It would help some of us if you also compare older dishwashers, not just "modern." I think mine is 50 years old. It doesn't heat the water, and the hot water supply in the building is set at about 125ºF. Perhaps MinuteFood should do a video about whether to replace an old dishwasher (that isn't broken).
In your case, the water isn't hot enough, so it won't be very effective. If it has the heating element and it's broken, fix it, if it doesn't have, a tabletop dishwasher or getting an electric hot faucet and use that water instead are options. Or buy a new dishwasher and sell yours for someone with very hot hot water.
125F, is about 52C, UK dishwashers run between 51 & 60C, so 52C should be do able, maybe not ideal but useable. Worth checking that the water is running hot before running the dishwasher, ie if the hot feed is next to your hot tap (faucet), run that 'til it's running hot, then start you dishwasher.
If your dishwasher is 50 years old (although I doubt that, as the chances of it not needing replacing due to breaking or whatever are very slim) then I would highly recommend replacing it. Technology has improved, safety standards have improved, a newer dishwasher will clean dishes much better, and will likely use much less water and energy due to more modern energy and water saving methods.
>NaThingSerious : On the other hand, a rule of thumb is to not replace large appliances that still work. Besides the obvious time & money costs to research, buy & install a new unit and to dispose of the old unit, manufacturing processes consume resources and generate pollution. Also, newer appliances tend to break down more quickly because they're not built to last.
@@brothermine2292 I tend to agree, if it does what you need/want, probably no need to change. If its not doing what you want/need, can it be made to do that? If so at what cost? Having said that, if you look at older cars, for instance, newer cars tend to give much better comfort, safer drive, safer in accidents, these happen even if not your fault, cheaper to run. Sometimes it is worth considering an upgrade. Re new stuff being not built to last, I think it is worse I think it is often built not to last. Washing machines are very simple machines really.
If your landlord pays utilities, maybe you should do it! Don't if your home is owned or managed by a corporation, but if you're one of the few folks out there acquainted with a chill landlord, it could be good for both of ya'll
Things worth noting. It’s worth scraping solid foods off, but you don’t need to pre-rinse in the sink before going into dishwasher. ALSO, not all things SHOULD go in a dishwasher: certain plastics that deform in high heat, wood utensils that can be ruptured from the high heat, and vacuum sealed containers may not hold their vacuum. SO, THOSE items should be hand-washed just before you run the dishwasher to allow the water to warm up before running the dishwasher. ALSO, on a similar note, I LOVE that this video spoke out about the germ /water temperature while hand washing topic; “washing water with extremely hot water” to kill the germs is sooooo wrong - just use water warm enough that it feels comfortable for you hand - you will NEVER want to warm the water up enough to the point that the hotness kills germs, at that point you are scalding you are hand.
It's actually blowing my mind that some people have a dishwasher and never use it, and even more so that they are proud and happy of that fact! I suppose if they have a truly ancient slumlord model it makes sense, but other than that, what a wild thing.
I enjoy washing the dishes by hand. There’s a meditative quality to the experience. Invariably there are dishes that don’t do well in the dishwasher as well, wooden items and most non-butter knives don’t do well in the dishwasher. It’s also considerably faster to do them by hand allowing for the kitchen to be done in short order. I still use the dishwasher for the bulk of things, but rarely a day goes by that hand washing isn’t also done.
So if you were single, would you run the dishwasher for half a dozen dishes, or just let dirty dishes sit around for a week until the dishwasher was full? I hope you enjoy roaches.
If it can’t be repaired, they are not terribly difficult to install from new. I couldn’t afford any of the quotes from plumbers, so I looked up some UA-cam videos and read the instructions. There’s generally 4 steps. Add a water supply, add a drain, add power cable, and put it in place. I only needed an adjustable wrench, a Philips head screw driver and a flathead screwdriver for my own and a drill bit. After doing mine I did another for my girlfriend’s house and that one only needed a 1/4 hex nut driver instead of a flathead. I also wasn’t able to turn off the main water supply to get a different valve for the dishwasher, so I added a T fitting so both the sink water and the dishwasher supply are operated by the same valve
(speaking for Europe) every dishwasher my family has ever had had a half-load button for when it got stinky and needed to be washed before fully loaded. That tips the efficiency even more towards dishwashers.
Please note that in the infographic that describes the cycles of the dishwasher, it's clear that _detergent pacs are useless in the prewash_. USE POWDER/GEL DETERGENT and put some in the prewash compartment!
@@doxielain2231 I mean, yeah, obviously. But more importantly I LISTENED to technology connections and started having way more success with my dishwasher:P
*if you need to for some people, living in some places, with some dishwashers, and some dirty dishes, prewash is unnecessary. for others, it's helpful. everyone should try it out, but you may not need it
Really, my biggest reason for pre-rinsing isn't because it cleans dishes better per se, but because a dish might sit in the dishwasher for several days before the dishwasher gets full enough to run. Any crumbs or food residue on those dishes in that time just sit there rotting, or worse, attracting bugs. I have actually had ants infest my dishwasher before. Get this, just running the dishwasher does next to nothing to get rid of ants. So it's not about cleaning the dishes better, it's about preventing food from being left out.
@@jakebocaj The more efficient method would depend heavily on the half-load size and the time spent pre-rinsing. However, you are probably right that running smaller, more frequent loads would be more efficient in the end.
I've had access to a Dishwasher for the last decade of my life and I haven't used it at all, due to two reasons: - Bachelor life meaning I only use a small handful of dishes/tableware - Owning a low number of dishes in the first place I feel like the best use of a Dishwasher is when you use a lot of dishes and you own a lot of dishes to cycle through. It's hard for me to justify using the Dishwasher when I only really use one dish and one fork at a time. However, I imagine the situation will change when a family is involved. Two people plus a child is going to generate a lot of dishes (and will need to own a lot of dishes in the first place). Good to know dishwashers are efficient and effective!
I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. I lived in an apartment without a dish washer for a few years, and pretty much just washed and reused the same two plates and bowls over and over. The rest of the set just sat in the cubbord. Now that I have a dishwasher though, I just slowly fill it throughout the week and run it once I've use the last plate, bowl, or fork etc. I bought a cheap dish set forever ago that has 8 of everything. It's not enough to fill the dishwasher, but I'm only running it once or twice a week.
One of the most common dishes, are in fact pots and pans, used daily for cooking at home. Sooo, the more you like to cook, especially when you like variety; it also adds up. Having a partner, or even a roommate or two who cook, seriously makes it worthwhile. Saves on food cost too- though, nothing beats cheap ramen, or cooked beans for cost (definitely eat the beans; much healthier, and more filling. ) At any rate, just cooking for yourself even, you probably don't need a washer. Definitely nice to have though! The countertop one another comment suggested is likely a great investment of you get more living mates! Love and Peace folks, best of luck in your pursuits ❤
I was supervisor of a dish room at a university. We had THOUSANDS of dishes. Sometimes up to a thousand students at once. I hate dishwashing now. I use the dishwasher whenever possible. Edit: Okay it wasn't thousands at once but it sure was after being rotated on busy days. Every night at closing it was a few hundred plates, bowls, cups, pans etc.
Wow, I can't even imagine washing a thousand dishes in one go. I'd probably hate dishwashing even with a dishwasher if I had to do a thousand dishes. To me, your statements sounds similar to this: I was responsible for moving items between offices. The offices are miles apart. Sometimes, I have to go a hundred miles between the two offices. I hate moving things between offices now. I use the car whenever possible instead of walking.
Usually not, but people often fill up the sink with two or more gallons of water. You couple that with the water used for rinsing and it comes out to a surprising amount of water. Couple that with the more frequent washing (most people with a dishwasher don’t run it every day), and the VAST majority of households would greatly benefit from a dishwasher from an efficiency standpoint. This doesn’t even take into count the hygienic advantages of dishwashers.
@KrisOsterhout Hygienicly and time efficiency dishwasher wins hands down Hand washing you dont need to rinse your dishes you can quite comfortably do a full load of dishes with 5 or 10 liters. Plus using a dishwasher some things cant be put through it so you will have to hand wash anyways adding to your water usage. Im traveling at the moment so i am pretty water conscious and i use less than 150L a month and that drinking and showering too. Hand washing is more water efficient if you have the time.
I'm generally pro-dishwasher, but I feel the need to point out that sanitizing is not the same as cleaning. There are times when the dishes may be sanitized (from long exposure to hot water), but not clean (from crusted on food). The fact that sometimes dishes may come out not completely clean, even if they are sanitized, is a major component of feeling like dishwashers are inefficient.
This all the way. If you are doing real cooking, and end up with crusty pots and pans, you can’t just throw them in the dishwasher and walk away. You have to stand there and scrub the crap out of them repeatedly until they are clean of crud, and at that point where they’re ready to go in the dishwasher, they’re basically done anyway. If someone is happy with the results of their dishwasher, I’m convinced they don’t cook. They’re just sticking something on a plate. But if you actually cook, the dishwasher is not saving you any time, because you have to stand there washing only to have the dishwasher wash it again. Now, the sanitizing power of hot water is a valid point, and probably the only convincing argument in this video. If we change the name of a dishwasher to dish sanitizer, I could probably get behind it. And this is probably the crux of the pushback. If you the thing does not *wash* your dishes, then it is not a dishwasher. When it can scrape the crud off of grandma’s turkey pan the day after Thanksgiving, it will be a dishwasher. Until then it is a dish sanitizer.
There are small dishwashers available that you can place on your counter, they're also marketed for camping. I have some issues with my hands which made it very painful for me to do dishes so I had to buy one of those and it made my life so much better
The thing is: as soon as pre-rinsing makes sense for you (because the dishes would otherwise sit in the dishwasher for a long time, or because your model isn't powerful enough) handwashing can be very efficient and takes roughly the same amount of time, if done right. Because the large majority of items (plates if you wash them right after eating or let them soak while you rinse other stuff, cutlery, cutting boards, most cooking utensils) need only one swipe with a soapy sponge and one quick rinse, and that's genuinely not much more time or effort than it takes to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. It's pans and pots that take more work, but washing up after dinner still rarely takes me more than 15 minutes, and that's on the rare occasion that I don't outsource the drying to someone else. If you're smart about letting things soak while you rinse other things, or rinse cutlery in one go, and realise that you don't need to use hot water for everything, it can be both time- and resource-efficient.
Our dishwasher was broken for a week a bit ago, and the amount of additional time and drying space we had to spend washing dishes (in addition to the usual handwash only/too big for dishwasher items) for a family + pets was insane. Time is money, and dishwashers save so so much working time.
As someone who lives alone, I definitely spend less than 4 minutes washing dishes a day (not including pans that can't go in the dishwasher anyway), and certain dishes I wash, I need clean and ready for the next day. So my dishwasher is a glorified drying (and storage) rack. Only exception is I'll run it after hosting a dinner party or something where I have a large number of dishes to clean at once
I have a small dishwasher and a good amount of dishes (the single tenant lifestyle is a lawless wasteland with no standards or conventions, so it's not easy to gauge how many dishes are "normal" for one person to own. But in my case, I have a few plates, a few bowls, a bunch of old glass containers/ jars I use as drinking glasses, some cups, a set of utensils etc etc etc). Which means I don't need to wash most dishes immediately for me to have some clean ones the next day. I can just load up my machine and run it once it's full (which is almost exactly when I've used up all my dishes), and repeat the cycle. Now, even though I got the cheapest viable dishwasher available to me, I know that not everyone has the money, the space or some other capacity to get one. BUT THAT ASIDE THOUGH, I do not know of any good reason to not use dishwashers, even for people who live alone
Stainless steel and enameled pans can go into dishwasher no problem. Tbh i think non stick would do there fine too, as long as you place them so they don't scratch on the pins
I have to pre-rinse because my dishwasher is one of the smaller portable ones. it doesn't have a connection to the water line so it can't do its own pre rinse cycle
I trust my dishwasher to disinfect the dishes, but it doesn't remove stuck-on cheese, among other things, no matter how neatly the dishes are placed, so I will keep pre-scrubbing until I get a better dishwasher.
Do you use pre wash detergent? Every dishwasher is designed to use two doses of detergent, for its two main cycles. The pre wash cycle water gets drained pretty quickly because its the first to go and its the cycle that deals with dishes that are the most dirty. If you dont put detergent in for that cycle, the cycle essentially just gets the dishes wet. Also check to make sure that the water coming from your kitchen sink is hot before turning on the dish washer. If it isnt, whenbyou turn it on the pre wash cycle will be washing with cold water. Do both of these things. Put in some detergent just at the bottom of the dishwasher, literally just throw some in there and then run the sink hot. This will make sure that the pre wash cycle is using hot soapy water instead of cold non-soapy water like its probably been doing. Once the prewash cycle water is drained, the main wash will only have to deal with somewhat dirty dishes and will have a lot more soap to wash them with.
The biggest difference: TIME.Washing dishes by hand simply takes a lot of time you can use for other things. When free time is already at a premium for you this begins to matter a lot.
This is why I use my dishwasher even for smaller loads. 5 coffee mugs, a popcorn bowl, some tumblers and a baking pan are my typical load and I know I'm saving water and time.
To me the greatest advantage of finally getting a dishwasher was not the cleanliness or energy use, but how much TIME it saved me! That beats all other considerations. But I did notice the glasses looked even cleaner than when I hand washed them. I do still was casseroles by hand though, as the dishwasher would otherwise fill too quickly or I may need it the next day too. I takes me 6 days to fill a load.
The catch here is that dishwashers are going to completely blow handwashing out of the water for removal of pathogens, but handwashing will be better for at least some forms of caked on dirt, and the latter is what is visible and generally judged as clean vs dirty day to day. It's an increasingly small difference, particularly when you mix in all the mistakes people make that are easily fixed to get better performance here, but it could explain why people *perceive* handwashing as better.
Yeah, but the nice thing about using the machine for everything by default is that exposes those few cases where you do need to put in some extra effort, so that you can expend that effort WAY more economically. Instead of hand scrubbing every single bowl you ever use on the off chance that the dishwasher might not be able to clean it, you see a little crud that you need to scrape off with a fingernail and a brush once a month or so. Seconds of manual effort vs hours. Refusing to use a dishwasher and washing everything by hand because it sometimes leaves on gunk is like refusing to vacuum and rug-doctoring your floors every week because it doesn't pick up stains.
@@icedragon769 I'm personally a pretty happy regular dishwasher user, I'm more saying that this results in some people misjudging how clean the dishes are between the 2 options
Definitely. I mean if it's the heat that's killing the bacteria, I suspect handwashing and using the oven like an autoclave would be better. Seeing how the water and the soap are used, I just can't find comfort in letting it do the washing part. After all, it relies on the heating part to beat handwashing. A better comparison would be dishwasher minus the heat vs. handwashing.
@@acctsys Well, in fairness, the options in practice are handwashing vs hot dishwasher, and the main goal is really to render the dishes food safe for reuse, so the dishwasher is more fit for purpose, it's just that people are used to judging them by visible dirt so it creates the appearance of handwashing being better. Handwashing and oven baking probably would be more effective, but not by much, and handwashing alone is already a lot more resource and time intensive than a dishwasher, it would be even worse if you then baked all your dishes for an hour afterwards
My 2 issues with dishwashers is that dishwashers can damage many kinds of kitchen wares like most plastic and glass not to mention cast iron. Second i find they don't remove food residue well so i tend to use about a gallon of water and some soap to remove the bulk of the crud on my dishes and hand clean what the dishwasher will damage then let the machine final clean rinse and sanitize the rest. This whole line of argument seems to ignore the damage and conflate sanitization with cleaning and vice versa a great example would be get 2 white ceramic cups or plates fill them with tea and let the tea evaporate then run one through the dishwasher and wipe the other with a wet soapy cloth both will remove some of the residue but the hand wash will get far more. Also the video is on point about sponges and drying mats are disgusting and if you don't hang them after each use and was qnd swap them regularly drying ot cleaning cloths can get nasty fast.
Because one offers convenience and the other doesn't. Is this really that hard of a question for you? Do you need to go back to grade school to learn basic rhetoric?
A lot of people misuse the dishwasher and attribute its failure to the machine and not their incorrect operation (not using pre-wash soap, not running the sink to remove cold water from the pipes before turning the dishwasher on, etc), a bunch of people also don't even try it, they hear from someone that it doesn't work so they don't even bother with it
@@coroner2141 what even are you trying to say? I'm going to assume you're implying dishwashers don't save time, which the video agrees with - the average dishwasher takes 2-4 hours to clean dishes. Until you realize that 'dishwasher time' is not 'your time', and you can do other stuff whilst the dishwasher chugs away.
The only thing that i haven't seen people actually compare - washing dishes with cold/cool water vs dishwasher. I tend to simply use cold water for hand washing so there, i am definitely saving the electricity but wasting a lot of water. However, the overall cost would be lower in hand washing in thaf case since water is cheaper than electricity.
Being against pre-rinse cleaning is ridiculous. Waiting for food to dry can make it extremely difficult to get off, even in the dishwasher. It also helps your dishwasher go longer between deep cleanings as it gets gunked up less quickly.
I'm afraid to put this thought out there ... Recently I had the thought and wondered how much microplastics we put into the environment with the favorite sponge we all use and that you showed. I used the brown natural ones they had before but are no longer available. Great cast iron tee.
Trying to be environmentally conscious is sometimes worse for the environment. Those "brown natural" sponges might have been made from sea sponges, which were nearly overfished to extinction. And the fishing could have contributed more carbon emissions than the manufacture of plastic sponges, similar to how a cotton shopping bag creates hundreds of times more carbon emissions than a single-use plastic bag, so you have to use it for years before it's beneficial for the environment. I'm not saying that plastic sponges are great for the environment either, but these things are never as simple as they seem at first. I'm only guessing, but maybe a luffa (sponge gourd) would be the most environmentally-friendly option?
But there are times when stains are made out of substances that don't dissolve well in water where a brush is much better at removing it, and putting it in the dishwasher won't remove everything properly.
If there are hard chunk stains, they need pressure to be taken down, which dishwashers can't do. Moreover, my mom, who is diligent with cleaning, tried a dishwasher and dishes came out visibly dirty, so they only work for relatively clean dishes.
I would _love_ to be able to do less handwashing! But my MiL's kitchen is _full_ of things that can't go in the dishwasher. Anything that comes with a nonstick coating, she chooses that in preference to anything sensible; cheap plastics that will melt; aluminums that will lose their finish; heirloom china where the pattern will wash off; pots and serving dishes that just plain won't fit... Plus, even in the new modern dishwasher, many of the heat-safe plastics cling to fats and _still_ come out with a soapy residue clinging to that.
I'm Asian (and not living in a Western country) and we don't do dishwashers. Also I cook and most expensive things can NOT go in a dishwasher. Glasses, knives, wooden stuff, fancy delicate china and custom crockery and teaware, you name it. I'd use one in a heartbeat if I were a cheap restaurant dealing with generic white porcelain plates but that does not describe my household.
@@jiahaotan696 Thats actually a common myth in non-Western countries, dishwashers can handle all those things. Glasses, knives, wooden stuff, even fancy delicate china and teaware. Dishwashers have different settings, much like laundry machines do, and you can choose the setting you want. Do you want it scrubbed hard? Sure. Do you want it delicate? Also fine. Do you want to do it with cold water? Its just a button away.
If this is the case when why do I keep having dried on food still stuck to my plates from the dishwasher? I don't think this takes into account people who only wash dishes once per week. We don't create enough dishes to run the dishwasher more than that. Most days, we accumulate 0 plates
Sounds like you have an old dishwasher and you're letting food dry. Put used dishes in the sink with water in them until you're ready to load and start right away. My dishwasher pump was failing and this happened to me. Then I threw it out and bought a Bosch. No problems since.
Are you using gel packs? Add a bit of powder detergent in for the rinse cycle. Also run the water hot before starting, Top tips from Technology Connections vid and the results are night and day.
@@gladitsnotme yeah food dries because if we leave it in a filled sink for 4-5 days it starts to smell. Otherwise we're right back at pre-rinsing, right? This dishwasher isn't that old, maybe 5 years
@@MaxPower417 using those Cascade (maybe not that brand) dishwashing packs, yea. Where would you add powder detergent? In the same opening as the packet, just pour some at the bottom then toss it on top?
@@Boombocks_Studio when you close the little door/cap with the pod you should see there is a little depression on top and that’s where you can put a little powder/gel. It’s specifically for the rinse cycle, where right now you are using just water because the door with the detergent doesn’t pop open until after the rinse.
Here's how I use a dishwasher: I still wash dishes, but I do it to remove all the grime, and loosenthe stuff that stuck on, ETC. The dishwasher for me is there to pick up the slack wherever I might've failed, sterilizing the dishes and getting any particles I missed during the handwash. It saves me time knowing I don't have to be meticulous in washing every dish, and guilt-free knowing there won't be a speck of food left.
I have a dishwasher at home, but my parents have never used it. The issue is that now we cannot use it even if we wanted to, because my parents have turned it into a storing space 😅
Something worth mentioning, bacteria doesn't mean bad or dirty. Biodiversity is very important (for many things including your gut health). And ingesting soap is very bad so make sure to rinse your dishes properly if you hand wash
Some Important considerations: Most people not using dishwashers, and especially those who are conscious of water-use, will not leave the tap running while they scrub dishes. One time to wet/rinse dishes & sponge, and again to rinse off soap to dry. Also, dishwashing requires the use of multiple dishes. As use dishes throughout the week, the dishwasher fills up and in one efficient cycle, its washed. As the next large population wave reaches adulthood, most don't but a 7+ set of dishes. Most people have a set of 4 standard dishes + personal collection. So its not practical to use the dishwasher half load (or less) twice a week while you have no other dishes left, or buy more dishes to use the dishwasher. Just handwashing throughout the day/week is quicker and easier.
Some other, opposing, still important considerations: You are still likely going to be running the tap in those situations for longer than 4 minutes. This is even stated in the video (“even the most water-conscious handwasher will still be using around double that of a dishwasher!”) First, sorry if english isn’t your first language, but dear god is this hard to understand. Second, it is still more efficient to just run the dishwasher on it’s fastest setting unless you are putting in literally 1 plate. If you’re washing like 2 plates, sure, go handwash. But if you’re doing 3-4-5 (maybe digging into that ‘personal collection’ you’re randomly assuming people have) you may as well just use the dishwasher. It kinda seems like you’re just trying to tack on some points you made up because you didn’t watch the video.
I've done a 180 on dishwashers in the last 2 years. I always suspected that they could be better at cleaning than doing it by hand just from a chemical perspective: hotter water is better at cleaning, and the dishwasher tablets are probably formulated to be especially good at cleaning in hot water. But it's only when I started learning about HOW a dishwasher works, that I saw just how much more efficient it is than handwashing. So now it seems to tick all the boxes for me, when compared to by hand: - Convenient - Effective/hygienic - Efficient/eco-friendly Admittedly, I also understand that not all households have a dishwasher and that may be influenced by factors like wealth, where you live, etc. But for those of us who have a dishwasher, it's one of those things where the most convenient option is also the most environmentally friendly one (under most circumstances), where in most everyday areas it's the opposite.
Still have to scrub the dishes to remove most gunk before you load them in the dishwasher, not necessarily pre-rinse. Every dishwashing machine that I have ever used, commercial ones in fast food or home appliances, left lots of gunk on them if the dishes didn't get a fair scrub before hand, just a wet scrubber is needed.
use soap in the pre wash container (or just throw some extra soap in the tub outside of the soap compartment if your washer doesn’t have one) and run the tap hot before starting the dishwasher, trust me
@@binglebongle8601 Dried on stuff on plates and other stuff, and wood utensils, they don't come off in the dishwasher. I run about 3 cups of water into a small dirty pot and then scrub them with a rough pad, loosens it up for the dishwasher. Have been using a dishwasher both professionally and at home for over 40 years, all the same story. The damn things don't scrub, they spray, and the pressure isn't high enough for many things.
I am all in for using a dishwasher, but what about the environmental impact of dishwasher detergent? I guess it goes roughly along with the water usage (i.e. hand washing uses more water, hence also more soap), but how much more aggressive is dishwasher detergent than normal soap?
It should be around the same amount of impact as normal soap, but you're likely using less detergent in the dishwasher. Main thing about dishwasher detergent vs normal dish soap is that the dishwasher detergent just doesn't foam up. If you are concerned though, consider using powder instead of something like a detergent pod. The pods can only be deployed during the wash cycle, so they're typically more powerful and more concentrated. Whereas the powder you can more easily choose how much detergent you add.
It depends on the choice of detergent. If you're using the powder or tablets, it probably contains bleach, which is not exactly a nice chemical to deal with, but it's mostly a problem for people with septic systems rather than municipal sewers. Septic systems are affected because they depend on bacterial activity to function, and bleach kills bacteria. In a municipal sewer, most of the bleach will break down into simple compounds like table salt and water, but there is evidence that a small portion may form chlorinated organic compounds, which could be carcinogenic in large enough quantities (more research is needed). If you're using the goop, then there's probably no bleach in it, just soap (surfactants) and enzymes. I find it hard to believe that the enzymes used in dishwashing will survive wastewater treatment, but surfactants may have environmental effects. Those chemicals are also present in the powder and tablets, and some kind of surfactant will be present in basically any means of washing anything (dishes, clothes, hands, the body, etc.), so it's not as if this is avoidable (but maybe we can find surfactants that cause less harm). As for hand-washing dish soap, you're likely to find surfactants and possibly something like lactic acid (to kill bacteria and/or descale surfaces), which again can have implications for septic systems if used in large enough quantities, but seems unlikely to cause broader environmental issues (lots of animals produce lactic acid naturally as part of their metabolism).
This is actually a good point. Especially with tablets and capsules... the soluble film they are wrapped in has a warning along the lines of "toxic to fish and aquatic life". Good thing there's no way for it to end up in natural water courses! (I'm British and that was sarcasm)
@@fuzziestlumpkin With regards to the toxicity, that's mostly in its pure, concentrated form. So basically, don't toss one of the pods in the river; if a fish eats that, it'll die. However, once the pod is in the wash, it completely breaks down in the water, and just lets all the soap out. That mixture will not only be extremely diluted, but will just be sent out with sewage anyway, to be processed later, so there's no real environmental impact any more than other types of soap.
HERE is how I hand-wash dishes: I use a sponge with a nylon wrap thing around it to make it semi-abrasive. I DO NOT load the sink with water. I pre-rinse dishes then load the sponge with the new Palmolive With Oxiclean and about 25% ammonia. That combination cuts grease like a hot knife through butter. I stack up the soapy dishes on the sink, then rinse them with HOT as I can stand water. This works fantastically and I bet if they were examined they would be very close to germ-free. Two things that you said apply here: It ISN'T energy efficient and it takes time. The issue is, I don't have room for a dishwasher in my kitchen. 😨
I bet that you would still find that your dishes aren’t as clean as a dishwasher but probably far cleaner than the average hand wash. However, given that you don’t have room for a dishwasher, I’d say you’re doing the best possible cleaning you can.
At the cabin where we have to haul in the water, you'd be surprised at how little is needed if you do it with low water usage in mind. Sure the water is not super hot but then the rinse is done with water that was boiled at way hotter then 65. Done with no extra energy half of the year as your heating the cabin anyway.
Unfortunately people don't like this option and I understand why, but I designate a counter for dirty dishes and the dishes that sit inside my dishwasher are clean. Dishes sitting on a counter get dry really quickly, which means they dont smell or attract insects. I live alone and go weeks in between cycles with no problems. Another option is to buy a dishwasher with an air purifying system, such as the beko ionguard system, but I dont depend on it for dirty plates
It might still be more water effective to run the dishwasher more often, like when it's 1/3 to 1/2 full, than to pre rinse each dish and only running at full capacity
The idea that some people have dishwashers but refuse to use them is mind blowing. I HATE washing dishes by hand. I would gladly put one in my apartment if I could.
This is one of your best videos so far, congratulations! Quite solid research, answers the unaddressed questions from the previous video (which is the biggest point), and it has great visuals and sounds
I didn't use a dishwasher for a long time until I looked into the research myself about 8 years ago. I don't prerinse anymore after a second look into the research, but I do prescrub certain kinds of foods before I put dishes in the washer because the dishwasher inevitably will fail to dislodge it. I'm glad that using the device is both more efficient and effective overall and only wish all the cookware and non-dishwasher safe items could also be tossed in there. 😛
I find there's always like pressed in gunk after a dishwasher cycle. Even if its technically sterilised, it just isn't something I'm gonna use without handwashing again myself. I get that 'I'm not stacking right' or whatever, but I've not yet managed to get it right at all, especially cutlery. Also, I just can't fit half the stuff I need washing in there so I have to mix between dishwasher and handwash anyway. Becomes more of an inconvenience overall. I've not gotten salmonella yet so seems handwashing is fine
Me: "Umm... these utensils are encrusted with dried-up bits of food, and all the glassware looks like a foggy day in London..." The Dishwasher: "It's all perfectly sterile, I promise!" Me: "That is not the issue!" Hyperbole aside, I really don't care if there's some trace amounts of bacteria left on my hand-washed dishes. My immune-system needs the workout - an overly sterile life is how you wind up developing a ton of autoimmune conditions. The trouble just is that, if you live alone, you either run a dishwasher that's 5% full - which, even according to the rather optimistic numbers presented in this video, isn't very efficient - or you let stuff sit in the dishwasher for *days,* accumulating until it's sorta-kinda-full at least... at which point the gunk covering them will have dried up and become basically impossible for the machine to clean properly. So the results are either disgusting, or disgustingly wasteful.
This is for the most part what I had expected, but one thing, we don't let our tap run while we wash, we fill our sink ( which is probably like 6l max ) and then wash our dishes in that
I love to see that your merch partnership is with DFTBA! The rest of the video is, of course, also great, but I'm always thrilled to see more popularity go towards the endeavors of the Green brothers.
It only makes no sense to not use a dishwasher if you have enough dishes that need cleaning. Not only do I live alone, I use a pretty small set of dishes daily: two plastic bowls, a multicooker bowl/pan, a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a fork, a mug, and a knife. Plastic dishes and knives are recommended against being put in a dishwasher, the former can deform because of the heat, and the latter can get dull; the multicooker pan will probably not even fit in one, and I'm sure it's not allowed to go in it either. I have literally zero reason to buy a dishwasher for two spoons, a fork, and a mug.
@@Lernos1 Well in that case: 1. Buy a real set of dishes and fill up dishwasher once every couple days. 2. Knives don't go dull in dishwasher - this warning is either from knives having untreated wooden handles that get damaged by water or weird japanese knives made of iron/carbon steel that rust easily. There is literally nothing else contacting knife than hot water solution with detergent soluable dirt. Or buy a mini dishwasher - they're still more cost effective than handwashing.
@@michahalczuk9071 Why would I buy a set I'm not going to use? I've been at it for 7 years. Sounds like inventing new problems to me. Second, are you sure a dishwasher is still more cost effective than less than 4 minutes of water running (I don't leave my tap open all the time duh), especially considering that hot water doesn't use electricity on its own (piped directly in), unlike a dishwasher, and electricity is more costly than hot water where I live?
@@Lernos1 4 minutes of running hot water is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than any dishwasher would use. Even including the detergent and running power, it's still going to be much more cost effective unless you count your time as genuinely worthless.
Still going to handwash. It's only myself most of the time. and while I'm inefficient with dishes, it's still 2-3 plates, 2-3 spoons and a fork most of the time. Seems more effort to load the dishwasher with that and run a load every day (I don't own enough dishes to let it hang out for a fuller load). Plus not all the dishes get dirty - I often pull a plate to carry takeout on that I eat out of the container, so the plate stays relatively clean. However, I do understand if families and such use it - busy lives and hand washing can take far longer than loading the dishwasher and letting it go. (I had to ask the office manager how to use the office dishwasher).
I don't use a dishwasher but it's purely for psychological reasons. Loading and unloading the dishwasher aren't particularly difficult tasks, but it's time spent all at once. When I hand wash, I can wash a couple dishes and maybe a pan immediately after using them. I may be putting in more work in the long run, but it means I don't put it off and end up with a backlog. When we had a dishwasher, we ironically ended up with more dishes sitting in the sink. The place handwashing really falls apart though is when you have a big cooking project and suddenly have a ton of dishes to do all by hand. I'm not entirely convinced by the amount of water used by handwashing. I grew up in a drought and was conditioned into using the minimum amount of water. I'm going to measure it tonight and see.
Measuring cleanliness with the amount of bacteria feels weird to me. I think how much food is stuck on the plate or how much oil is left on the plate are better measures because bacteria can grow from these leftovers.
They have to measure it that way, because most of the time oils/leftover food gets removed by either a dishwasher or by a human completely, since you can see it. You can't see bacteria, which is probably why it's still there after humans wash dishes. A dishwasher doesn't need to see the dirt, because it's washing the dish x times no matter how dirty it looks, which is probably why there is almost no bacteria after a full washing cycle.
i didn’t realize how much water i was using hand-washing dishes till our pipes froze back in january and i was standing there trying to fill the sink with water from jugs. a gallon is a shockingly small amount of water when you have a sink full of dirty dishes, and i’m impressed that the machines can efficiently use that amount to clean a whole load. the heat must really make a difference, and that thought has me wondering if it might be worth boiling my dishes after each wash or soaking them with bleach to make up for the lack of sanitation power in the handwashing process.
So glad to see part 2 of this series! Your research and the papers you cited were very informative for me, and the animations are engaging as hell. Keep it up!
I remember I watched some documentary/educational video when I was younger (not UA-cam) that encouraged hand washing dishes over using the dishwasher to be more environmentally friendly. This stuck with me for the last n years but with the recent surge in high-quality dishwasher PSAs on UA-cam I have finally shed the burden of lies I have carried since childhood.
That is very interesting. I live in Brazil and we don't really use dishwashers that much. My dad owns a fairly modern one and he barely uses it in his household. Only when they have like A TON OF DISHES, like when they had ppl over, etc. Def not on day to day and I guess I kinda soaked that in. I never even considered a dishwasher.
I think the problem with this video at its core with how it was approached is that if someone bought a new dishwasher for their house or are living somewhere with a new dishwasher, odds are they value it and will use it. A lot of people have dishwashers that are over ten years old and don't know how much to trust them. Ultimately, many of these points still hold true for older dishwashers, but also due to breakdown over time there might be elements where they fail. Everyone *should experiment* with their dishwasher, mainly looking for gunk left behind since pressure, not temperature which kills bacteria, will likely be the failure point. My current dishwasher I do not trust to get the gunk off of dishes so I make sure to soak and scrape them beforehand. Dishwashers are a great final step to ensure bacteria is gone for all dishes, but dishes may require prep. It's just important to find the best way to save water while still doing what you need.
I wished I could have a dishwasher but alas, I'm in a dorm room. But that made me realize that yeah, the dorm's faucet water is not hot enough. I'll think of using my kettle more often to wash my dishes in sterilizing water. :)
I’ve used my dishwasher before. I didn’t like it much and it’s a tradition between family and I to hand wash together. We always make sure to use the kettle to get boiling water and sanitize our sponges. I like the idea of a dishwasher just not the using it.
All very good points that I don't diaagree with. But I live alone and only use one plate, bowl, fork, spoon, and/or knife at any given time. It bothers me a lot less to just rinse and wash off the one thing I use vs buying/using enough plates and flatware to actually fill up a dishwasher and then unload it.
Yup, I also live alone, and only wash up every other day, so that I'm getting even better use out of the bowl of water used for it. I'm from the UK, and it's common here to not just use the sink, but a plastic bowl *in* the sink, so that you *can* rinse a few things off if needs be without necessarily raising the water level in the bowl. I'd have to measure it to be sure, but I'm pretty certain I use far less than that 30 litres per wash !
You only have one place setting worth of crockery? I also live alone, but, while I'm not exactly throwing 30 person dinner parties, do occasionally have people over... I also use mugs, glasses, pots, pans, spatulas and the like throughout the day,, all of which go into the dishwasher which runs every 3 or 4 days while I'm asleep. Even if it only takes you 10 mins a day to wash up, that's still more than an hour a week spent with your hands in a bowl of water... that's a good 60 hours a year. And I'd actually say living alone is a bigger reason to get a dishwasher cuz there's nobody to share the workload, it's always your damn turn to do the dishes! I'm not really trying to criticise your way of life. If you don't want to use a dishwasher, I don't think you should use one. I just think this justification is bad.
i live alone aswell, but i love my dishwasher. in fact i would call it my most "non essential" appliance i have. i run it about one and a half times per week. i also use it for bowls and sometimes pots and pans.
Run the tap until it's hot before running the dishwasher! The dishwasher is connected to the hot water supply so if you actually supply it hot water and not water that's been sitting and chilling in pipes, you can actually get good cleaning out of it
My only problem with dishwashers is their inability to remove caked on food. I'd love to just throw all the dishes in and call it good, but my family isn't very good at rinsing after meals or soaking, and putting dishes with significant amounts of food on them into the dishwasher SIGNIFICANTLY diminishes the effectiveness of the washer and the cleanliness of the dishes, not to mention that the trap on ours doesn't come out the way your expect, so you have to dig stuff out before removing and cleaning it so it doesn't stay in the bottom. As a result of all of this, i almost have to wash the dishes before putting them in the dish washer to be sanitized....
This might mean your dishwasher is old. The heat and pressure of the water should get off even pretty nasty food residue. If it's not working though, a few ideas. 1) Make sure the water is hot before starting the cycle; the hotter the initial water is, the hotter it'll be throughout the cycle, and hotter water = better cleaning. 2) Make sure you're using good soap. If your dishes are really crusty, you'll need more heavy duty soap. 3) Just make it a rule in your house to rinse off plates. Asking your family to make that a habit shouldn't be hard.
For environmental purposes thought, the amount of energy and water used to build the dishwasher should be considered (like a lifecycle assessment). I think there are some studies on that, and it gives some points to handwashing.
Why do some dishes (especially plastics) have residual detergent fragrance after going through the dishwasher? Are there detergent/rinse aid residues on dishes?
Sometimes. It really depends on which soaps you're using, how hot the water is, among other issues. If you have residue, consider switching soap to either a different brand, or a less concentrated formula for a little while and see what happens. As for the rinse aids, it SHOULDN'T leave residue, so if you're concerned that's what's causing it, I'd save testing the removal of that for last. Two other tips! Make sure that the water in your dish washer is actually hot. Cold water circulating is less likely to get gunk off than hot water. Secondly, make sure you're not overloading your washer, or stacking dishes strangely. If some plates/bowls are overlapping, and water can't rinse that particular dish, then the residue is gonna stay there.
Putting plastic in dishwashers isn't recommended. There was a big study on plastic water bottles in The Netherlands and it showed after 15 washes in a dishwasher it started to drop micro plastic. Which can't be healthy for you. Because they get to hot. Besides that, non plastic silverware is usually more robust which leads in less waste.
It completely baffles me that there are people who own a dishwasher but refuse to use it. Washing dishes by hand is such a hassle, it's labor intensive, takes forever and just outright sucks. Who on earth would do that voluntarily? I also just don't get the people who say doing the dishes is calming or helps them decompress. I'm lazy and impatient, doing the dishes might be one of my most hated tasks, I absolutely despised every second of it back when I had no dishwasher.
@@KrisOsterhout Just scrape off any big chunks. The water in the basin will eventually get quite dirty so you'd need to change it if you're doing a lot of dishes. So no rinsing involved.
@@Jonas-Seiler I think it is; filling the washing basin is like 10 liters maybe if you have many dishes, that's the same as running my (relatively slow) tap for just two minutes
Idk if my hybrid method is relevant here, but i just use a hot wet sponge/brillo to scrub the stuff that i don't trust the washer to knock off then put the dishes in the washer. I trust that way more than by hand or washer alone. 😊
when i moved to my brand new apartment having a dishwasher was a huge boon i hated washing by hand when i still lived with my parents sticking you hand in the disgusting water was the worst feeling i run the washer every few days whenever im out of clean glasses or plates filling it with dishwasher salt and using diswasher cleaner are essential to keep it functional salt for avoiding limescale buildup and dishwasher cleaner every 30 days to avoid smells and it also cleans the inside of the machine
The one thing I always miss in these types of videos is comparisons to washing in the sink itself, using a plug in the sink. As far as I know this is the most common way of hand washing in Europe, or at least in The Netherlands. I can do the dishes for the day, based on a 2-person load of dishes, using just about 5L of water, or at most 10L if I have to re-fill the sink after the water becomes dirtier. Comparing that to 15 liters for a dishwasher makes it look a lot better than the typical strawman argument of comparing it to handwashing dishes under the running tap. I'd love to see some stats on how much water the typical handwash in a sink uses, and how big of an effect that has on how clean the dishes come out (I imagine running the tap for the entire time will probably result in cleaner dishes, tbh).
i remember having to refill the sink whenever it would get too dirty and having to stick my hand in the filthy water to remove the plug and a standard energy certified dishwasher uses 11 litres of water i don't miss handwashing that's for sure
I too am European. Trust me, most people I met do run the tap all the time. Those who don't or try to save water have poor wash results: soapy glasses, oily pans, film on plates. It might work in some countries where people do not eat a lot of starchy or cooked foods, but it definitely doesn't work here in Italy. My dishwasher, on the other hand, has always given me great results
When I do the dishes by hand I usually fill one side of the sink(we have two sided sinks) with water as hot as the heater does with lots of dishwasher soap and put the dishes there to soak them for a while, then I scrub all of them on the other side and when that part gets full, I rinse all of them in one go, sometimes I rinse all the cutlery at once because it has cleared off most of the soap by the water of the rest of the dishes. I'm fairly convinced that takes less water that an old dishwasher. The only think I'm giving the dishwashers is that they're better at *sanitizing* the dishes since they completely scald them, but I'm still convinced by hand gets them better clean off. Plus there's a lot of things that just break apart if you let the dishwasher do the cleaning
At the house where I have lived most of my life, none of the dishwashers we've had (we've had several of them) have been very good at cleaning dishes so we ALWAYS have to wash off every little spec of grime from the dishes before we load the dishwasher otherwise the dishes end up even dirtier once they get out of the dishwasher.
Hand washing doesn't require a whole gallon per minute. I use like 1/4 cup water with a spritz of soap to scrub a bowl, then maybe 2 cups water to rinse it off. Doesn't even need hot water if you wash dishes immediately after using them, or at least giving them some time to soak.
When i wash dishes by hand, i dump as many as i can in a tub filled with hot water, and let them sit for 1 minute, to then skrub em. Wouldent this way save more water, than continuously having the tab on?
You still need to rinse If you reuse the water to rinse, then you're compromising in safety. Even if you do use less water, it's probably not saving you a whole lot of money For my rates, 1000 gallons = $4.40 Or 1 gallon = $.0044 Not a lot of savings
@@hector-m-carrillo *DO* you still need to rinse? The only items I rinse are glasses, to avoid soap spots. Anything else goes on the drying rack for some number of minutes before being hand dried. By then most of the water has dripped or evaporated off. I see no evidence of anyone getting ill from the small amounts of bacteria on dishes, cutlery and crockery.
@@AthAthanasius soap is primarily a surfactant, meaning it works by wrapping dirt/bacteria/oil in bubbles. This is important because a lot of things like to stick onto surfaces. Soap does have antimicrobial properties - as in actively killing - but it primarily works through those bubbles. medicine-yale-edu/news-article/why-soap-works/ Without rinsing, you are just letting everything that was trapped inside the bubbles free; which accomplishes very little. They could have gone down the drain instead. This is then followed by you using a drying rag to clean the soap off, meaning your dish cloths are gathering bacteria significantly more quickly than the average. We don't have a lot of data on how many people get sick from this because it's very hard to find out *where* someone got sick from. But let's just assume the number of people who have gotten sick is >0. Given that dishwashers are overwhelminglf more likely to be cleaner and cheaper, why would you risk those >0 persons with the worse alternative.
soap is primarily a surfactant, meaning it works by wrapping dirt/bacteria/oil in bubbles. This is important because a lot of things like to stick onto surfaces. Soap does have antimicrobial properties - as in actively killing - but it primarily works through those bubbles. Google why soap works and go to the Yale link Without rinsing, you are just letting everything that was trapped inside the bubbles free, which accomplishes very little; they could have gone down the drain instead. This is then followed by you using a drying rag to clean the soap off, meaning your dish cloths are gathering bacteria significantly more quickly than the average. We don't have a lot of data on how many people get sick from this because it's very hard to find out *where* someone got sick from. But let's just assume the number of people who have gotten sick is >0. Given that dishwashers are overwhelmingly more likely to be cleaner and cheaper, why would you risk those >0 persons with the worse alternative.
It annoys me that the only metric for cleanliness is the amount of germs left. That's sanitazation, not cleaning. I've never heard of someone getting dick from the bacteria left on a dish or spoon. Also dishes will get contaminated the moment you take them out of the dishwasher. It would be nice to show how dishwashers do with hard to clean gunk or oddly shaped items. Also, dishwashers use a lot more soap. People who have diswashers and don't use them are usually not the ones who bought them, often in rental homes. It's crazy that apartments include a dishwasher before including a washing machine. A lot of people people who have a dishwasher need to drive to clean their clothes. It feels that in the US, dishwashers are really veing forced on everyone. And this video is very based towards convincing people to use them, and only the positive arguments were cherry picked.
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I disagree with the energy use you don’t necessarily have to use hot water. And the costs differ if water is heated with gas. To gloss it over that proves your conclusion to be moot. Hand washing for us is a big cost saver on energy
After Technology Connections video and this, I now know how to actually use my dishwasher
Right? It feels like there are so many tools in our day-to-day life that we've taken for granted for decades upon decades in a way that modernity just *assumes* we know how to optimally use them... but we don't!
I did it after the old TC video
Just got through watching a few hours of dishwasher content there
LOVE tech connections! i really appreciate these scientists teaching me how to live most effectively
Indeed Alec's obsession is the next level
The time and effort savings alone makes it worth it. I've had people argue with me that they can finish washing the dishes by hand faster than my dishwasher's 2 hour cycle. I counter by telling them that I only spend time loading and unloading the dishwasher. The dishwasher's working time isn't using my own time. I am free to do other things while it works.
Exactly. The time the dishwasher takes (compared to doing it by hand) is only relevant if you need clean dishes right this minute.
This is especially true for modern dishwashers that open the door on their own. You don’t even need to take time to open it to let them dry!
Same is true for EV charging...
@@markotriesteThat doesn't bring much comfort a few hundred miles into a long road trip.
@@MNbenMN I will say, having a "natural mandatory break" on the kind of "medium length trip" where you need to charge _once_ and can plan for it can be kinda nice. Get a gas station coffe and chill out
But that's of course driving where there's infrastructure for it, and not going along a vast desert highway or what have you (I'm from Sweden, we don't have a lot of those)
Though that's where the _actual_ superior mode of transportation would be a nice option: TRAINS
I washed dishes by hand throughout college (no dishwasher available). When I moved into a place with a dishwasher, I used it avidly, but always wondered if I was wasting water because I didn't own enough dishes to fill a full load. It's good to know for certain that I have not been wasting water as I absolutely would be hand washing for more than 4 minutes.
But you don't need to run the water for the time you are doing the dishes?
How do people wash dishes by hand that makes them use so much water?
@@rogerwilco2 yeah that kinda confused me too. We have both a dishwasher and we hand wash just because we have a ton of dishes and we always just fill up the sink like 1/3 of the way and wash everything in there. I also noticed in the video that they werent doing that and just let the water go down the drain which really just confused me
@@rogerwilco2I’m quite convinced that the participants of any dishwasher vs handwasher comparison are running the water the whole time they handwash and thus favoring the dishwasher. I see the same thing happening when people wash their hands, and I wonder who taught them that. But then I see water constantly being ran like that in movie and tv shows…
@@hynnow18for letting water run when you wash your hand (especially in public space), there are reasons (if they don't close the sink using paper towel that reason is in the trash)
@@rogerwilco2 Most people will fill at least one basin partway with water, usually soapy water, which is gonna be at least two gallons even if you're being conservative on a small sink. That means you have two minutes of running the water to rinse the dishes, assuming you don't pre-rinse or have any need to top off the basin, before you're using as much water as the dishwasher. There's definitely a tipping point for loading in too few dishes for the dishwasher to be worth it but most people understand that a single plate would be a waste.
Did you watch this video, and are frustrated because you live in a place without a dishwasher, or without a place to even install one? Look up a countertop dishwasher! I got a Faberware personally. It requires no installation, fits on my counter without issue, takes maybe 5 minutes to load, and saves me dozens of hours every week. I used to have no choice but to hand-wash for 10 years, and I hated it. Getting a countertop dishwasher was a game-changer. It was literally one of the best purchases I've ever made.
I would love one if I had the counter space for it
Same I can only recommend it it's the highlight of my kitchen 😂😂
.
Do you have space for a roll-away dishwasher?
Dozens of hours per week seems like a sliiiight overexaggeration
1. To fully compare efficiency, also compare the amount of labor involved. The main reason why people buy dishwashers is to reduce the time spent on a repetitive & boring chore. I wanted to write "You had me at time-saving" but it wasn't mentioned.
2. It would help some of us if you also compare older dishwashers, not just "modern." I think mine is 50 years old. It doesn't heat the water, and the hot water supply in the building is set at about 125ºF. Perhaps MinuteFood should do a video about whether to replace an old dishwasher (that isn't broken).
In your case, the water isn't hot enough, so it won't be very effective. If it has the heating element and it's broken, fix it, if it doesn't have, a tabletop dishwasher or getting an electric hot faucet and use that water instead are options. Or buy a new dishwasher and sell yours for someone with very hot hot water.
125F, is about 52C, UK dishwashers run between 51 & 60C, so 52C should be do able, maybe not ideal but useable.
Worth checking that the water is running hot before running the dishwasher, ie if the hot feed is next to your hot tap (faucet), run that 'til it's running hot, then start you dishwasher.
If your dishwasher is 50 years old (although I doubt that, as the chances of it not needing replacing due to breaking or whatever are very slim) then I would highly recommend replacing it. Technology has improved, safety standards have improved, a newer dishwasher will clean dishes much better, and will likely use much less water and energy due to more modern energy and water saving methods.
>NaThingSerious : On the other hand, a rule of thumb is to not replace large appliances that still work. Besides the obvious time & money costs to research, buy & install a new unit and to dispose of the old unit, manufacturing processes consume resources and generate pollution. Also, newer appliances tend to break down more quickly because they're not built to last.
@@brothermine2292 I tend to agree, if it does what you need/want, probably no need to change.
If its not doing what you want/need, can it be made to do that?
If so at what cost?
Having said that, if you look at older cars, for instance, newer cars tend to give much better comfort, safer drive, safer in accidents, these happen even if not your fault, cheaper to run. Sometimes it is worth considering an upgrade.
Re new stuff being not built to last, I think it is worse I think it is often built not to last.
Washing machines are very simple machines really.
I know she said it's okay not to own a dishwasher, but now I feel bad 😂 I feel like sending this to my landlord
If your landlord pays utilities, maybe you should do it! Don't if your home is owned or managed by a corporation, but if you're one of the few folks out there acquainted with a chill landlord, it could be good for both of ya'll
There are also those countertop dishwashers that don't require much for setting up though they can't fit many dishes as a traditional one.
Things worth noting. It’s worth scraping solid foods off, but you don’t need to pre-rinse in the sink before going into dishwasher. ALSO, not all things SHOULD go in a dishwasher: certain plastics that deform in high heat, wood utensils that can be ruptured from the high heat, and vacuum sealed containers may not hold their vacuum. SO, THOSE items should be hand-washed just before you run the dishwasher to allow the water to warm up before running the dishwasher.
ALSO, on a similar note, I LOVE that this video spoke out about the germ /water temperature while hand washing topic; “washing water with extremely hot water” to kill the germs is sooooo wrong - just use water warm enough that it feels comfortable for you hand - you will NEVER want to warm the water up enough to the point that the hotness kills germs, at that point you are scalding you are hand.
This really irritates me! People have told me before that water isn't hot enough, and every time I'm just thinking "do you WANT me to burn myself?"
Meanwhile I'm here shocked that people have hot waters in their taps. Where I live taps are almost always cold water only
One added benefit is that the dishwasher CAN get up to not just your taps max temp, but even heat it up further to even indeed reach sanitizing temps
@@cherriberri8373 oh absolutely, partly what I was trying to get at.
@@derp4581 That's an infrastructure issue, nobody wants the expense of retrofitting pipes for the hot water.
It's actually blowing my mind that some people have a dishwasher and never use it, and even more so that they are proud and happy of that fact! I suppose if they have a truly ancient slumlord model it makes sense, but other than that, what a wild thing.
Yeah, it's very silly and spoiled. I went from a house with a dishwasher to one without, and it was awful.
Some people like the peace of mind that hand washing brings. That said, there’s no right answer either way. To each their own.
I enjoy washing the dishes by hand. There’s a meditative quality to the experience. Invariably there are dishes that don’t do well in the dishwasher as well, wooden items and most non-butter knives don’t do well in the dishwasher. It’s also considerably faster to do them by hand allowing for the kitchen to be done in short order. I still use the dishwasher for the bulk of things, but rarely a day goes by that hand washing isn’t also done.
So if you were single, would you run the dishwasher for half a dozen dishes, or just let dirty dishes sit around for a week until the dishwasher was full? I hope you enjoy roaches.
@azraphon what peace of mind? What peace is there to be gained?
Ok, ok... you win. I'll get my dishwasher serviced and I'll try it out. The hot water and long time arguments finally convinced me to at least try.
Once you actually start using it, you'll be baffled by how much time was wasted staring off into space scrubbing dishes.
If it can’t be repaired, they are not terribly difficult to install from new. I couldn’t afford any of the quotes from plumbers, so I looked up some UA-cam videos and read the instructions. There’s generally 4 steps. Add a water supply, add a drain, add power cable, and put it in place. I only needed an adjustable wrench, a Philips head screw driver and a flathead screwdriver for my own and a drill bit. After doing mine I did another for my girlfriend’s house and that one only needed a 1/4 hex nut driver instead of a flathead.
I also wasn’t able to turn off the main water supply to get a different valve for the dishwasher, so I added a T fitting so both the sink water and the dishwasher supply are operated by the same valve
And it saves water.
@@johnbradwell3834 In my country the installer has to be certified for insurance companies to pay up if water damage occurs from it
I recommend watching @TechnologyConnections videos on the dishwasher as well. Wealth of knowledge over there
(speaking for Europe) every dishwasher my family has ever had had a half-load button for when it got stinky and needed to be washed before fully loaded. That tips the efficiency even more towards dishwashers.
Please note that in the infographic that describes the cycles of the dishwasher, it's clear that _detergent pacs are useless in the prewash_. USE POWDER/GEL DETERGENT and put some in the prewash compartment!
Someone watches Technology Connections
@@doxielain2231 I mean, yeah, obviously. But more importantly I LISTENED to technology connections and started having way more success with my dishwasher:P
Many modern dish washers don’t have a pre wash compartment. But you can just throw a bit of powder wherever in the bottom of the dishwasher.
*if you need to
for some people, living in some places, with some dishwashers, and some dirty dishes, prewash is unnecessary. for others, it's helpful. everyone should try it out, but you may not need it
Just use powder for everything. The tablets are just worse in every way, just look pretty.
1:42 use powdered detergent, that way you can also have detergent during the pre wash making your dish washer even more effective!
This helps my audhd tremendously. I am now armed with the information needed to proceed with using the dishwasher in most cases
Is that slang for autism and adhd
@@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxXyes
Really, my biggest reason for pre-rinsing isn't because it cleans dishes better per se, but because a dish might sit in the dishwasher for several days before the dishwasher gets full enough to run. Any crumbs or food residue on those dishes in that time just sit there rotting, or worse, attracting bugs. I have actually had ants infest my dishwasher before. Get this, just running the dishwasher does next to nothing to get rid of ants.
So it's not about cleaning the dishes better, it's about preventing food from being left out.
I wonder how they get in. It should be water tight. The smell when you open it alone keeps me pre-rinsing.
why not just run a half load on your dishwasher?
it would still save more water than pre rinsing
You might need to train the ants better, I find that if I give them a little treat on the floor they don't jump up on the counter as much …
@@jakebocaj The more efficient method would depend heavily on the half-load size and the time spent pre-rinsing. However, you are probably right that running smaller, more frequent loads would be more efficient in the end.
lol @test74088
I've had access to a Dishwasher for the last decade of my life and I haven't used it at all, due to two reasons:
- Bachelor life meaning I only use a small handful of dishes/tableware
- Owning a low number of dishes in the first place
I feel like the best use of a Dishwasher is when you use a lot of dishes and you own a lot of dishes to cycle through. It's hard for me to justify using the Dishwasher when I only really use one dish and one fork at a time.
However, I imagine the situation will change when a family is involved. Two people plus a child is going to generate a lot of dishes (and will need to own a lot of dishes in the first place).
Good to know dishwashers are efficient and effective!
I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. I lived in an apartment without a dish washer for a few years, and pretty much just washed and reused the same two plates and bowls over and over. The rest of the set just sat in the cubbord. Now that I have a dishwasher though, I just slowly fill it throughout the week and run it once I've use the last plate, bowl, or fork etc. I bought a cheap dish set forever ago that has 8 of everything. It's not enough to fill the dishwasher, but I'm only running it once or twice a week.
One of the most common dishes, are in fact pots and pans, used daily for cooking at home. Sooo, the more you like to cook, especially when you like variety; it also adds up.
Having a partner, or even a roommate or two who cook, seriously makes it worthwhile. Saves on food cost too- though, nothing beats cheap ramen, or cooked beans for cost (definitely eat the beans; much healthier, and more filling. )
At any rate, just cooking for yourself even, you probably don't need a washer. Definitely nice to have though! The countertop one another comment suggested is likely a great investment of you get more living mates!
Love and Peace folks, best of luck in your pursuits ❤
When i first got a dishwasher I was making much better meals for myself because I didn't have to wash up
I was supervisor of a dish room at a university. We had THOUSANDS of dishes. Sometimes up to a thousand students at once. I hate dishwashing now. I use the dishwasher whenever possible.
Edit: Okay it wasn't thousands at once but it sure was after being rotated on busy days. Every night at closing it was a few hundred plates, bowls, cups, pans etc.
Wow, I can't even imagine washing a thousand dishes in one go. I'd probably hate dishwashing even with a dishwasher if I had to do a thousand dishes.
To me, your statements sounds similar to this: I was responsible for moving items between offices. The offices are miles apart. Sometimes, I have to go a hundred miles between the two offices. I hate moving things between offices now. I use the car whenever possible instead of walking.
Are people leaving their faucet open when washing dishes?
Usually not, but people often fill up the sink with two or more gallons of water. You couple that with the water used for rinsing and it comes out to a surprising amount of water. Couple that with the more frequent washing (most people with a dishwasher don’t run it every day), and the VAST majority of households would greatly benefit from a dishwasher from an efficiency standpoint. This doesn’t even take into count the hygienic advantages of dishwashers.
@KrisOsterhout
Hygienicly and time efficiency dishwasher wins hands down
Hand washing you dont need to rinse your dishes you can quite comfortably do a full load of dishes with 5 or 10 liters.
Plus using a dishwasher some things cant be put through it so you will have to hand wash anyways adding to your water usage.
Im traveling at the moment so i am pretty water conscious and i use less than 150L a month and that drinking and showering too.
Hand washing is more water efficient if you have the time.
I'm generally pro-dishwasher, but I feel the need to point out that sanitizing is not the same as cleaning. There are times when the dishes may be sanitized (from long exposure to hot water), but not clean (from crusted on food). The fact that sometimes dishes may come out not completely clean, even if they are sanitized, is a major component of feeling like dishwashers are inefficient.
This all the way. If you are doing real cooking, and end up with crusty pots and pans, you can’t just throw them in the dishwasher and walk away. You have to stand there and scrub the crap out of them repeatedly until they are clean of crud, and at that point where they’re ready to go in the dishwasher, they’re basically done anyway. If someone is happy with the results of their dishwasher, I’m convinced they don’t cook. They’re just sticking something on a plate.
But if you actually cook, the dishwasher is not saving you any time, because you have to stand there washing only to have the dishwasher wash it again.
Now, the sanitizing power of hot water is a valid point, and probably the only convincing argument in this video. If we change the name of a dishwasher to dish sanitizer, I could probably get behind it. And this is probably the crux of the pushback. If you the thing does not *wash* your dishes, then it is not a dishwasher.
When it can scrape the crud off of grandma’s turkey pan the day after Thanksgiving, it will be a dishwasher. Until then it is a dish sanitizer.
Just soak them in water for an hour, crust gone.
as a non-dishwasher owner (and a very dishwasher wisher, but never living an apartment that has one) this is painful to watch.
Right ...most people don't have a dishwasher. What are we supposed to do lol. We good tho because otherwise we would have been ill already.
There are small dishwashers available that you can place on your counter, they're also marketed for camping. I have some issues with my hands which made it very painful for me to do dishes so I had to buy one of those and it made my life so much better
The thing is: as soon as pre-rinsing makes sense for you (because the dishes would otherwise sit in the dishwasher for a long time, or because your model isn't powerful enough) handwashing can be very efficient and takes roughly the same amount of time, if done right. Because the large majority of items (plates if you wash them right after eating or let them soak while you rinse other stuff, cutlery, cutting boards, most cooking utensils) need only one swipe with a soapy sponge and one quick rinse, and that's genuinely not much more time or effort than it takes to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. It's pans and pots that take more work, but washing up after dinner still rarely takes me more than 15 minutes, and that's on the rare occasion that I don't outsource the drying to someone else. If you're smart about letting things soak while you rinse other things, or rinse cutlery in one go, and realise that you don't need to use hot water for everything, it can be both time- and resource-efficient.
1:13 ooh, i love the ripples animation showing where to click the link for the previous video! It's like a UI/UX for a video game design!
Our dishwasher was broken for a week a bit ago, and the amount of additional time and drying space we had to spend washing dishes (in addition to the usual handwash only/too big for dishwasher items) for a family + pets was insane. Time is money, and dishwashers save so so much working time.
As someone who lives alone, I definitely spend less than 4 minutes washing dishes a day (not including pans that can't go in the dishwasher anyway), and certain dishes I wash, I need clean and ready for the next day. So my dishwasher is a glorified drying (and storage) rack. Only exception is I'll run it after hosting a dinner party or something where I have a large number of dishes to clean at once
Ditto! So I’m happy she touched on our use case in this video.
I have a small dishwasher and a good amount of dishes (the single tenant lifestyle is a lawless wasteland with no standards or conventions, so it's not easy to gauge how many dishes are "normal" for one person to own. But in my case, I have a few plates, a few bowls, a bunch of old glass containers/ jars I use as drinking glasses, some cups, a set of utensils etc etc etc). Which means I don't need to wash most dishes immediately for me to have some clean ones the next day. I can just load up my machine and run it once it's full (which is almost exactly when I've used up all my dishes), and repeat the cycle.
Now, even though I got the cheapest viable dishwasher available to me, I know that not everyone has the money, the space or some other capacity to get one. BUT THAT ASIDE THOUGH, I do not know of any good reason to not use dishwashers, even for people who live alone
Stainless steel and enameled pans can go into dishwasher no problem.
Tbh i think non stick would do there fine too, as long as you place them so they don't scratch on the pins
@@Ubeogesh I use carbon steel, you definitely cannot put carbon steel in the dishwasher or you strip your seasoning
Use the dishwasher often enough that its rubber hoses don't dry out and crack. (Assuming it has rubber hoses.)
I have to pre-rinse because my dishwasher is one of the smaller portable ones. it doesn't have a connection to the water line so it can't do its own pre rinse cycle
I trust my dishwasher to disinfect the dishes, but it doesn't remove stuck-on cheese, among other things, no matter how neatly the dishes are placed, so I will keep pre-scrubbing until I get a better dishwasher.
Does pre-soaking work? (Easier than scrubbing.)
Do you use pre wash detergent? Every dishwasher is designed to use two doses of detergent, for its two main cycles. The pre wash cycle water gets drained pretty quickly because its the first to go and its the cycle that deals with dishes that are the most dirty. If you dont put detergent in for that cycle, the cycle essentially just gets the dishes wet. Also check to make sure that the water coming from your kitchen sink is hot before turning on the dish washer. If it isnt, whenbyou turn it on the pre wash cycle will be washing with cold water.
Do both of these things. Put in some detergent just at the bottom of the dishwasher, literally just throw some in there and then run the sink hot. This will make sure that the pre wash cycle is using hot soapy water instead of cold non-soapy water like its probably been doing. Once the prewash cycle water is drained, the main wash will only have to deal with somewhat dirty dishes and will have a lot more soap to wash them with.
The biggest difference: TIME.Washing dishes by hand simply takes a lot of time you can use for other things. When free time is already at a premium for you this begins to matter a lot.
This is why I use my dishwasher even for smaller loads. 5 coffee mugs, a popcorn bowl, some tumblers and a baking pan are my typical load and I know I'm saving water and time.
To me the greatest advantage of finally getting a dishwasher was not the cleanliness or energy use, but how much TIME it saved me! That beats all other considerations. But I did notice the glasses looked even cleaner than when I hand washed them. I do still was casseroles by hand though, as the dishwasher would otherwise fill too quickly or I may need it the next day too. I takes me 6 days to fill a load.
The catch here is that dishwashers are going to completely blow handwashing out of the water for removal of pathogens, but handwashing will be better for at least some forms of caked on dirt, and the latter is what is visible and generally judged as clean vs dirty day to day. It's an increasingly small difference, particularly when you mix in all the mistakes people make that are easily fixed to get better performance here, but it could explain why people *perceive* handwashing as better.
Yeah, but the nice thing about using the machine for everything by default is that exposes those few cases where you do need to put in some extra effort, so that you can expend that effort WAY more economically.
Instead of hand scrubbing every single bowl you ever use on the off chance that the dishwasher might not be able to clean it, you see a little crud that you need to scrape off with a fingernail and a brush once a month or so. Seconds of manual effort vs hours.
Refusing to use a dishwasher and washing everything by hand because it sometimes leaves on gunk is like refusing to vacuum and rug-doctoring your floors every week because it doesn't pick up stains.
Especially when the bacteria that they're referring to are not necessarily pathogenic
@@icedragon769 I'm personally a pretty happy regular dishwasher user, I'm more saying that this results in some people misjudging how clean the dishes are between the 2 options
Definitely. I mean if it's the heat that's killing the bacteria, I suspect handwashing and using the oven like an autoclave would be better. Seeing how the water and the soap are used, I just can't find comfort in letting it do the washing part. After all, it relies on the heating part to beat handwashing. A better comparison would be dishwasher minus the heat vs. handwashing.
@@acctsys Well, in fairness, the options in practice are handwashing vs hot dishwasher, and the main goal is really to render the dishes food safe for reuse, so the dishwasher is more fit for purpose, it's just that people are used to judging them by visible dirt so it creates the appearance of handwashing being better.
Handwashing and oven baking probably would be more effective, but not by much, and handwashing alone is already a lot more resource and time intensive than a dishwasher, it would be even worse if you then baked all your dishes for an hour afterwards
My 2 issues with dishwashers is that dishwashers can damage many kinds of kitchen wares like most plastic and glass not to mention cast iron. Second i find they don't remove food residue well so i tend to use about a gallon of water and some soap to remove the bulk of the crud on my dishes and hand clean what the dishwasher will damage then let the machine final clean rinse and sanitize the rest.
This whole line of argument seems to ignore the damage and conflate sanitization with cleaning and vice versa a great example would be get 2 white ceramic cups or plates fill them with tea and let the tea evaporate then run one through the dishwasher and wipe the other with a wet soapy cloth both will remove some of the residue but the hand wash will get far more.
Also the video is on point about sponges and drying mats are disgusting and if you don't hang them after each use and was qnd swap them regularly drying ot cleaning cloths can get nasty fast.
4:36 sounds dandy until the washer is clogged with food chunks so yes pre rinsing is needed
I find it odd that people purposefully don’t use their dishwasher but happily use their clothes-washing machine.
Because one offers convenience and the other doesn't. Is this really that hard of a question for you? Do you need to go back to grade school to learn basic rhetoric?
@@coroner2141 Maybe you should go back to school if you can't even see how both offer convenience, maybe also learn some manners while you are at it
Most countries don’t really use dryers
A lot of people misuse the dishwasher and attribute its failure to the machine and not their incorrect operation (not using pre-wash soap, not running the sink to remove cold water from the pipes before turning the dishwasher on, etc), a bunch of people also don't even try it, they hear from someone that it doesn't work so they don't even bother with it
@@coroner2141 what even are you trying to say? I'm going to assume you're implying dishwashers don't save time, which the video agrees with - the average dishwasher takes 2-4 hours to clean dishes. Until you realize that 'dishwasher time' is not 'your time', and you can do other stuff whilst the dishwasher chugs away.
Except cooked-on, or dried-on egg, that always stays on my dishes after the dishwasher.
You got Technology Connection's recent video in the description. GJ.
I love Alec's peculiar obsessions.
And yours too.
The only thing that i haven't seen people actually compare - washing dishes with cold/cool water vs dishwasher.
I tend to simply use cold water for hand washing so there, i am definitely saving the electricity but wasting a lot of water. However, the overall cost would be lower in hand washing in thaf case since water is cheaper than electricity.
This is the content I prefer on UA-cam, shot and informative
Being against pre-rinse cleaning is ridiculous. Waiting for food to dry can make it extremely difficult to get off, even in the dishwasher. It also helps your dishwasher go longer between deep cleanings as it gets gunked up less quickly.
I'm afraid to put this thought out there ... Recently I had the thought and wondered how much microplastics we put into the environment with the favorite sponge we all use and that you showed. I used the brown natural ones they had before but are no longer available.
Great cast iron tee.
Trying to be environmentally conscious is sometimes worse for the environment. Those "brown natural" sponges might have been made from sea sponges, which were nearly overfished to extinction.
And the fishing could have contributed more carbon emissions than the manufacture of plastic sponges, similar to how a cotton shopping bag creates hundreds of times more carbon emissions than a single-use plastic bag, so you have to use it for years before it's beneficial for the environment.
I'm not saying that plastic sponges are great for the environment either, but these things are never as simple as they seem at first. I'm only guessing, but maybe a luffa (sponge gourd) would be the most environmentally-friendly option?
You can get dish washing sponges that are made from Cellulose. They're a bit more pricey, though, unfortunately. Mine are by the brand Spontex.
But there are times when stains are made out of substances that don't dissolve well in water where a brush is much better at removing it, and putting it in the dishwasher won't remove everything properly.
If there are hard chunk stains, they need pressure to be taken down, which dishwashers can't do. Moreover, my mom, who is diligent with cleaning, tried a dishwasher and dishes came out visibly dirty, so they only work for relatively clean dishes.
I would _love_ to be able to do less handwashing! But my MiL's kitchen is _full_ of things that can't go in the dishwasher. Anything that comes with a nonstick coating, she chooses that in preference to anything sensible; cheap plastics that will melt; aluminums that will lose their finish; heirloom china where the pattern will wash off; pots and serving dishes that just plain won't fit... Plus, even in the new modern dishwasher, many of the heat-safe plastics cling to fats and _still_ come out with a soapy residue clinging to that.
Maybe you're using too much detergent then. Have you tried powder detergent with different amounts?
I'm Asian (and not living in a Western country) and we don't do dishwashers.
Also I cook and most expensive things can NOT go in a dishwasher. Glasses, knives, wooden stuff, fancy delicate china and custom crockery and teaware, you name it.
I'd use one in a heartbeat if I were a cheap restaurant dealing with generic white porcelain plates but that does not describe my household.
Get rid of kitchen items that can't go into the dishwasher. That was my mothers attitude way back. If it can't go in the dishwasher why have it?
@@jiahaotan696 Thats actually a common myth in non-Western countries, dishwashers can handle all those things. Glasses, knives, wooden stuff, even fancy delicate china and teaware. Dishwashers have different settings, much like laundry machines do, and you can choose the setting you want. Do you want it scrubbed hard? Sure. Do you want it delicate? Also fine. Do you want to do it with cold water? Its just a button away.
@@kennixox262 That's my attitude as well, but it's not my stuff, and I'm not arguing the point with somebody pushing 90 years old.
If this is the case when why do I keep having dried on food still stuck to my plates from the dishwasher? I don't think this takes into account people who only wash dishes once per week. We don't create enough dishes to run the dishwasher more than that. Most days, we accumulate 0 plates
Sounds like you have an old dishwasher and you're letting food dry. Put used dishes in the sink with water in them until you're ready to load and start right away. My dishwasher pump was failing and this happened to me. Then I threw it out and bought a Bosch. No problems since.
Are you using gel packs? Add a bit of powder detergent in for the rinse cycle. Also run the water hot before starting, Top tips from Technology Connections vid and the results are night and day.
@@gladitsnotme yeah food dries because if we leave it in a filled sink for 4-5 days it starts to smell. Otherwise we're right back at pre-rinsing, right? This dishwasher isn't that old, maybe 5 years
@@MaxPower417 using those Cascade (maybe not that brand) dishwashing packs, yea. Where would you add powder detergent? In the same opening as the packet, just pour some at the bottom then toss it on top?
@@Boombocks_Studio when you close the little door/cap with the pod you should see there is a little depression on top and that’s where you can put a little powder/gel. It’s specifically for the rinse cycle, where right now you are using just water because the door with the detergent doesn’t pop open until after the rinse.
It would have been nice a comparison about the use of soap / detergent
Here is a question. Who fonded those researches? Dishwasher makers?
References in the description, you can check yourself, funding has to be disclosed :)
Here's how I use a dishwasher: I still wash dishes, but I do it to remove all the grime, and loosenthe stuff that stuck on, ETC. The dishwasher for me is there to pick up the slack wherever I might've failed, sterilizing the dishes and getting any particles I missed during the handwash. It saves me time knowing I don't have to be meticulous in washing every dish, and guilt-free knowing there won't be a speck of food left.
I have a dishwasher at home, but my parents have never used it. The issue is that now we cannot use it even if we wanted to, because my parents have turned it into a storing space 😅
Which baffles me. At that point, why not just remove the dishwasher and build another cabinet?
Something worth mentioning, bacteria doesn't mean bad or dirty. Biodiversity is very important (for many things including your gut health). And ingesting soap is very bad so make sure to rinse your dishes properly if you hand wash
Some Important considerations:
Most people not using dishwashers, and especially those who are conscious of water-use, will not leave the tap running while they scrub dishes. One time to wet/rinse dishes & sponge, and again to rinse off soap to dry.
Also, dishwashing requires the use of multiple dishes. As use dishes throughout the week, the dishwasher fills up and in one efficient cycle, its washed. As the next large population wave reaches adulthood, most don't but a 7+ set of dishes. Most people have a set of 4 standard dishes + personal collection. So its not practical to use the dishwasher half load (or less) twice a week while you have no other dishes left, or buy more dishes to use the dishwasher. Just handwashing throughout the day/week is quicker and easier.
Actually it is still more efficient to run the machine less full and more often than hand washing is.
rationalization of the insane
Some other, opposing, still important considerations:
You are still likely going to be running the tap in those situations for longer than 4 minutes. This is even stated in the video (“even the most water-conscious handwasher will still be using around double that of a dishwasher!”)
First, sorry if english isn’t your first language, but dear god is this hard to understand. Second, it is still more efficient to just run the dishwasher on it’s fastest setting unless you are putting in literally 1 plate. If you’re washing like 2 plates, sure, go handwash. But if you’re doing 3-4-5 (maybe digging into that ‘personal collection’ you’re randomly assuming people have) you may as well just use the dishwasher. It kinda seems like you’re just trying to tack on some points you made up because you didn’t watch the video.
I've done a 180 on dishwashers in the last 2 years. I always suspected that they could be better at cleaning than doing it by hand just from a chemical perspective: hotter water is better at cleaning, and the dishwasher tablets are probably formulated to be especially good at cleaning in hot water. But it's only when I started learning about HOW a dishwasher works, that I saw just how much more efficient it is than handwashing. So now it seems to tick all the boxes for me, when compared to by hand:
- Convenient
- Effective/hygienic
- Efficient/eco-friendly
Admittedly, I also understand that not all households have a dishwasher and that may be influenced by factors like wealth, where you live, etc. But for those of us who have a dishwasher, it's one of those things where the most convenient option is also the most environmentally friendly one (under most circumstances), where in most everyday areas it's the opposite.
A fellow Knork Silverware enjoyer
Not the youtuber I expected to see, yet one I welcome wholeheartedly ❤
HECK yes - they're the best!
How to make me read the description and click on links in it: Bait me with extra efficiency
Still have to scrub the dishes to remove most gunk before you load them in the dishwasher, not necessarily pre-rinse. Every dishwashing machine that I have ever used, commercial ones in fast food or home appliances, left lots of gunk on them if the dishes didn't get a fair scrub before hand, just a wet scrubber is needed.
use soap in the pre wash container (or just throw some extra soap in the tub outside of the soap compartment if your washer doesn’t have one) and run the tap hot before starting the dishwasher, trust me
Yeah...nope. not if you're using the dishwasher correctly. Watch the video by technology connections.
@@binglebongle8601 Dried on stuff on plates and other stuff, and wood utensils, they don't come off in the dishwasher. I run about 3 cups of water into a small dirty pot and then scrub them with a rough pad, loosens it up for the dishwasher. Have been using a dishwasher both professionally and at home for over 40 years, all the same story. The damn things don't scrub, they spray, and the pressure isn't high enough for many things.
I am all in for using a dishwasher, but what about the environmental impact of dishwasher detergent? I guess it goes roughly along with the water usage (i.e. hand washing uses more water, hence also more soap), but how much more aggressive is dishwasher detergent than normal soap?
It should be around the same amount of impact as normal soap, but you're likely using less detergent in the dishwasher. Main thing about dishwasher detergent vs normal dish soap is that the dishwasher detergent just doesn't foam up.
If you are concerned though, consider using powder instead of something like a detergent pod. The pods can only be deployed during the wash cycle, so they're typically more powerful and more concentrated. Whereas the powder you can more easily choose how much detergent you add.
It depends on the choice of detergent. If you're using the powder or tablets, it probably contains bleach, which is not exactly a nice chemical to deal with, but it's mostly a problem for people with septic systems rather than municipal sewers. Septic systems are affected because they depend on bacterial activity to function, and bleach kills bacteria. In a municipal sewer, most of the bleach will break down into simple compounds like table salt and water, but there is evidence that a small portion may form chlorinated organic compounds, which could be carcinogenic in large enough quantities (more research is needed).
If you're using the goop, then there's probably no bleach in it, just soap (surfactants) and enzymes. I find it hard to believe that the enzymes used in dishwashing will survive wastewater treatment, but surfactants may have environmental effects. Those chemicals are also present in the powder and tablets, and some kind of surfactant will be present in basically any means of washing anything (dishes, clothes, hands, the body, etc.), so it's not as if this is avoidable (but maybe we can find surfactants that cause less harm).
As for hand-washing dish soap, you're likely to find surfactants and possibly something like lactic acid (to kill bacteria and/or descale surfaces), which again can have implications for septic systems if used in large enough quantities, but seems unlikely to cause broader environmental issues (lots of animals produce lactic acid naturally as part of their metabolism).
This is actually a good point. Especially with tablets and capsules... the soluble film they are wrapped in has a warning along the lines of "toxic to fish and aquatic life". Good thing there's no way for it to end up in natural water courses! (I'm British and that was sarcasm)
@@fuzziestlumpkin With regards to the toxicity, that's mostly in its pure, concentrated form. So basically, don't toss one of the pods in the river; if a fish eats that, it'll die. However, once the pod is in the wash, it completely breaks down in the water, and just lets all the soap out. That mixture will not only be extremely diluted, but will just be sent out with sewage anyway, to be processed later, so there's no real environmental impact any more than other types of soap.
HERE is how I hand-wash dishes:
I use a sponge with a nylon wrap thing around it to make it semi-abrasive. I DO NOT load the sink with water. I pre-rinse dishes then load the sponge with the new Palmolive With Oxiclean and about 25% ammonia. That combination cuts grease like a hot knife through butter. I stack up the soapy dishes on the sink, then rinse them with HOT as I can stand water. This works fantastically and I bet if they were examined they would be very close to germ-free. Two things that you said apply here: It ISN'T energy efficient and it takes time. The issue is, I don't have room for a dishwasher in my kitchen. 😨
I bet that you would still find that your dishes aren’t as clean as a dishwasher but probably far cleaner than the average hand wash. However, given that you don’t have room for a dishwasher, I’d say you’re doing the best possible cleaning you can.
get a counter top model
At the cabin where we have to haul in the water, you'd be surprised at how little is needed if you do it with low water usage in mind. Sure the water is not super hot but then the rinse is done with water that was boiled at way hotter then 65. Done with no extra energy half of the year as your heating the cabin anyway.
It takes days for us to fill the dishwasher. Opening that thing when it's halfway full STINKS. We pre-rinse to avoid that.
How few times per day do you eat
Unfortunately people don't like this option and I understand why, but I designate a counter for dirty dishes and the dishes that sit inside my dishwasher are clean.
Dishes sitting on a counter get dry really quickly, which means they dont smell or attract insects. I live alone and go weeks in between cycles with no problems.
Another option is to buy a dishwasher with an air purifying system, such as the beko ionguard system, but I dont depend on it for dirty plates
It might still be more water effective to run the dishwasher more often, like when it's 1/3 to 1/2 full, than to pre rinse each dish and only running at full capacity
I never prerinse and I agree, sometimes stuff stinks. Leaving the door ajar greatly helps, also I use a napkin to remove food residue
The idea that some people have dishwashers but refuse to use them is mind blowing. I HATE washing dishes by hand. I would gladly put one in my apartment if I could.
I watched your last video and decided to experiment. You were right! Thank you for so many hours saved!!
Do we still need sterile dishes? I think we mostly look for gunk. My family's dishwasher us a bit unclear to use too...
This is one of your best videos so far, congratulations!
Quite solid research, answers the unaddressed questions from the previous video (which is the biggest point), and it has great visuals and sounds
I didn't use a dishwasher for a long time until I looked into the research myself about 8 years ago. I don't prerinse anymore after a second look into the research, but I do prescrub certain kinds of foods before I put dishes in the washer because the dishwasher inevitably will fail to dislodge it. I'm glad that using the device is both more efficient and effective overall and only wish all the cookware and non-dishwasher safe items could also be tossed in there. 😛
I wonder about the energy consumption if one takes into account the energy required to manufacture and ship dishwashers?
Compared to the continuous energy usage in heating water, still much less than handwashing
I find there's always like pressed in gunk after a dishwasher cycle. Even if its technically sterilised, it just isn't something I'm gonna use without handwashing again myself.
I get that 'I'm not stacking right' or whatever, but I've not yet managed to get it right at all, especially cutlery.
Also, I just can't fit half the stuff I need washing in there so I have to mix between dishwasher and handwash anyway. Becomes more of an inconvenience overall. I've not gotten salmonella yet so seems handwashing is fine
Me: "Umm... these utensils are encrusted with dried-up bits of food, and all the glassware looks like a foggy day in London..."
The Dishwasher: "It's all perfectly sterile, I promise!"
Me: "That is not the issue!"
Hyperbole aside, I really don't care if there's some trace amounts of bacteria left on my hand-washed dishes. My immune-system needs the workout - an overly sterile life is how you wind up developing a ton of autoimmune conditions. The trouble just is that, if you live alone, you either run a dishwasher that's 5% full - which, even according to the rather optimistic numbers presented in this video, isn't very efficient - or you let stuff sit in the dishwasher for *days,* accumulating until it's sorta-kinda-full at least... at which point the gunk covering them will have dried up and become basically impossible for the machine to clean properly. So the results are either disgusting, or disgustingly wasteful.
This is for the most part what I had expected, but one thing, we don't let our tap run while we wash, we fill our sink ( which is probably like 6l max ) and then wash our dishes in that
I love to see that your merch partnership is with DFTBA! The rest of the video is, of course, also great, but I'm always thrilled to see more popularity go towards the endeavors of the Green brothers.
Never had a dishwasher. I wish we had one. Handwashing is tedious and tiring.
Good modern 60 cm dishwasher (Europe) uses
hell yeah dude hit em with the math
It only makes no sense to not use a dishwasher if you have enough dishes that need cleaning. Not only do I live alone, I use a pretty small set of dishes daily: two plastic bowls, a multicooker bowl/pan, a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a fork, a mug, and a knife. Plastic dishes and knives are recommended against being put in a dishwasher, the former can deform because of the heat, and the latter can get dull; the multicooker pan will probably not even fit in one, and I'm sure it's not allowed to go in it either. I have literally zero reason to buy a dishwasher for two spoons, a fork, and a mug.
@@Lernos1 Well in that case:
1. Buy a real set of dishes and fill up dishwasher once every couple days.
2. Knives don't go dull in dishwasher - this warning is either from knives having untreated wooden handles that get damaged by water or weird japanese knives made of iron/carbon steel that rust easily.
There is literally nothing else contacting knife than hot water solution with detergent soluable dirt.
Or buy a mini dishwasher - they're still more cost effective than handwashing.
@@michahalczuk9071 Why would I buy a set I'm not going to use? I've been at it for 7 years. Sounds like inventing new problems to me. Second, are you sure a dishwasher is still more cost effective than less than 4 minutes of water running (I don't leave my tap open all the time duh), especially considering that hot water doesn't use electricity on its own (piped directly in), unlike a dishwasher, and electricity is more costly than hot water where I live?
@@Lernos1 4 minutes of running hot water is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than any dishwasher would use.
Even including the detergent and running power, it's still going to be much more cost effective unless you count your time as genuinely worthless.
I hope there will be a third video on how to keep the dishwasher clean! If your dishwasher is dirty then you might as well hand wash.
Still going to handwash. It's only myself most of the time. and while I'm inefficient with dishes, it's still 2-3 plates, 2-3 spoons and a fork most of the time. Seems more effort to load the dishwasher with that and run a load every day (I don't own enough dishes to let it hang out for a fuller load). Plus not all the dishes get dirty - I often pull a plate to carry takeout on that I eat out of the container, so the plate stays relatively clean. However, I do understand if families and such use it - busy lives and hand washing can take far longer than loading the dishwasher and letting it go. (I had to ask the office manager how to use the office dishwasher).
I don't use a dishwasher but it's purely for psychological reasons. Loading and unloading the dishwasher aren't particularly difficult tasks, but it's time spent all at once. When I hand wash, I can wash a couple dishes and maybe a pan immediately after using them. I may be putting in more work in the long run, but it means I don't put it off and end up with a backlog. When we had a dishwasher, we ironically ended up with more dishes sitting in the sink. The place handwashing really falls apart though is when you have a big cooking project and suddenly have a ton of dishes to do all by hand.
I'm not entirely convinced by the amount of water used by handwashing. I grew up in a drought and was conditioned into using the minimum amount of water. I'm going to measure it tonight and see.
Measuring cleanliness with the amount of bacteria feels weird to me. I think how much food is stuck on the plate or how much oil is left on the plate are better measures because bacteria can grow from these leftovers.
They have to measure it that way, because most of the time oils/leftover food gets removed by either a dishwasher or by a human completely, since you can see it. You can't see bacteria, which is probably why it's still there after humans wash dishes. A dishwasher doesn't need to see the dirt, because it's washing the dish x times no matter how dirty it looks, which is probably why there is almost no bacteria after a full washing cycle.
i didn’t realize how much water i was using hand-washing dishes till our pipes froze back in january and i was standing there trying to fill the sink with water from jugs. a gallon is a shockingly small amount of water when you have a sink full of dirty dishes, and i’m impressed that the machines can efficiently use that amount to clean a whole load. the heat must really make a difference, and that thought has me wondering if it might be worth boiling my dishes after each wash or soaking them with bleach to make up for the lack of sanitation power in the handwashing process.
So glad to see part 2 of this series! Your research and the papers you cited were very informative for me, and the animations are engaging as hell. Keep it up!
I remember I watched some documentary/educational video when I was younger (not UA-cam) that encouraged hand washing dishes over using the dishwasher to be more environmentally friendly. This stuck with me for the last n years but with the recent surge in high-quality dishwasher PSAs on UA-cam I have finally shed the burden of lies I have carried since childhood.
Dishwasher is a lot less effort… so it wins 😂
That is very interesting. I live in Brazil and we don't really use dishwashers that much. My dad owns a fairly modern one and he barely uses it in his household. Only when they have like A TON OF DISHES, like when they had ppl over, etc. Def not on day to day and I guess I kinda soaked that in. I never even considered a dishwasher.
I think the problem with this video at its core with how it was approached is that if someone bought a new dishwasher for their house or are living somewhere with a new dishwasher, odds are they value it and will use it. A lot of people have dishwashers that are over ten years old and don't know how much to trust them. Ultimately, many of these points still hold true for older dishwashers, but also due to breakdown over time there might be elements where they fail. Everyone *should experiment* with their dishwasher, mainly looking for gunk left behind since pressure, not temperature which kills bacteria, will likely be the failure point. My current dishwasher I do not trust to get the gunk off of dishes so I make sure to soak and scrape them beforehand. Dishwashers are a great final step to ensure bacteria is gone for all dishes, but dishes may require prep. It's just important to find the best way to save water while still doing what you need.
I wished I could have a dishwasher but alas, I'm in a dorm room. But that made me realize that yeah, the dorm's faucet water is not hot enough. I'll think of using my kettle more often to wash my dishes in sterilizing water. :)
I use a scouring pad to wash my dishes. They come out very clean. Also the bacteria in the kitchen isn't gonna kill you. Your body can handle it!
I’ve used my dishwasher before. I didn’t like it much and it’s a tradition between family and I to hand wash together. We always make sure to use the kettle to get boiling water and sanitize our sponges. I like the idea of a dishwasher just not the using it.
All very good points that I don't diaagree with. But I live alone and only use one plate, bowl, fork, spoon, and/or knife at any given time. It bothers me a lot less to just rinse and wash off the one thing I use vs buying/using enough plates and flatware to actually fill up a dishwasher and then unload it.
Yup, I also live alone, and only wash up every other day, so that I'm getting even better use out of the bowl of water used for it. I'm from the UK, and it's common here to not just use the sink, but a plastic bowl *in* the sink, so that you *can* rinse a few things off if needs be without necessarily raising the water level in the bowl.
I'd have to measure it to be sure, but I'm pretty certain I use far less than that 30 litres per wash !
You only have one place setting worth of crockery? I also live alone, but, while I'm not exactly throwing 30 person dinner parties, do occasionally have people over... I also use mugs, glasses, pots, pans, spatulas and the like throughout the day,, all of which go into the dishwasher which runs every 3 or 4 days while I'm asleep.
Even if it only takes you 10 mins a day to wash up, that's still more than an hour a week spent with your hands in a bowl of water... that's a good 60 hours a year. And I'd actually say living alone is a bigger reason to get a dishwasher cuz there's nobody to share the workload, it's always your damn turn to do the dishes!
I'm not really trying to criticise your way of life. If you don't want to use a dishwasher, I don't think you should use one. I just think this justification is bad.
i live alone aswell, but i love my dishwasher. in fact i would call it my most "non essential" appliance i have. i run it about one and a half times per week. i also use it for bowls and sometimes pots and pans.
Run the tap until it's hot before running the dishwasher! The dishwasher is connected to the hot water supply so if you actually supply it hot water and not water that's been sitting and chilling in pipes, you can actually get good cleaning out of it
My only problem with dishwashers is their inability to remove caked on food. I'd love to just throw all the dishes in and call it good, but my family isn't very good at rinsing after meals or soaking, and putting dishes with significant amounts of food on them into the dishwasher SIGNIFICANTLY diminishes the effectiveness of the washer and the cleanliness of the dishes, not to mention that the trap on ours doesn't come out the way your expect, so you have to dig stuff out before removing and cleaning it so it doesn't stay in the bottom. As a result of all of this, i almost have to wash the dishes before putting them in the dish washer to be sanitized....
This might mean your dishwasher is old. The heat and pressure of the water should get off even pretty nasty food residue. If it's not working though, a few ideas. 1) Make sure the water is hot before starting the cycle; the hotter the initial water is, the hotter it'll be throughout the cycle, and hotter water = better cleaning. 2) Make sure you're using good soap. If your dishes are really crusty, you'll need more heavy duty soap. 3) Just make it a rule in your house to rinse off plates. Asking your family to make that a habit shouldn't be hard.
For environmental purposes thought, the amount of energy and water used to build the dishwasher should be considered (like a lifecycle assessment). I think there are some studies on that, and it gives some points to handwashing.
Why do some dishes (especially plastics) have residual detergent fragrance after going through the dishwasher? Are there detergent/rinse aid residues on dishes?
Metal and Ceramic dishes are non-porous, plastic dishes are generally porous, so they will retain some of the cleaning chemicals
Sometimes. It really depends on which soaps you're using, how hot the water is, among other issues. If you have residue, consider switching soap to either a different brand, or a less concentrated formula for a little while and see what happens. As for the rinse aids, it SHOULDN'T leave residue, so if you're concerned that's what's causing it, I'd save testing the removal of that for last.
Two other tips! Make sure that the water in your dish washer is actually hot. Cold water circulating is less likely to get gunk off than hot water. Secondly, make sure you're not overloading your washer, or stacking dishes strangely. If some plates/bowls are overlapping, and water can't rinse that particular dish, then the residue is gonna stay there.
Putting plastic in dishwashers isn't recommended.
There was a big study on plastic water bottles in The Netherlands and it showed after 15 washes in a dishwasher it started to drop micro plastic. Which can't be healthy for you. Because they get to hot.
Besides that, non plastic silverware is usually more robust which leads in less waste.
It completely baffles me that there are people who own a dishwasher but refuse to use it. Washing dishes by hand is such a hassle, it's labor intensive, takes forever and just outright sucks. Who on earth would do that voluntarily?
I also just don't get the people who say doing the dishes is calming or helps them decompress. I'm lazy and impatient, doing the dishes might be one of my most hated tasks, I absolutely despised every second of it back when I had no dishwasher.
How do the water usage numbers of dishwasher compare with handwashing if you fill the washing basin with hot water and then *turn off the tap*?
You don’t rinse your dishes?
@@KrisOsterhout Just scrape off any big chunks. The water in the basin will eventually get quite dirty so you'd need to change it if you're doing a lot of dishes. So no rinsing involved.
it cant be enough of a difference to be relevant
@@Jonas-Seiler I think it is; filling the washing basin is like 10 liters maybe if you have many dishes, that's the same as running my (relatively slow) tap for just two minutes
Agree with you. Anytime anyone cites dishwasher vs handwasher, I want to know how they’re handwashing
Idk if my hybrid method is relevant here, but i just use a hot wet sponge/brillo to scrub the stuff that i don't trust the washer to knock off then put the dishes in the washer. I trust that way more than by hand or washer alone. 😊
Wow!! I'm getting a dishwasher today
Yea, sometimes a girlfriend is a good investment.
when i moved to my brand new apartment having a dishwasher was a huge boon i hated washing by hand when i still lived with my parents sticking you hand in the disgusting water was the worst feeling i run the washer every few days whenever im out of clean glasses or plates filling it with dishwasher salt and using diswasher cleaner are essential to keep it functional salt for avoiding limescale buildup and dishwasher cleaner every 30 days to avoid smells and it also cleans the inside of the machine
The one thing I always miss in these types of videos is comparisons to washing in the sink itself, using a plug in the sink. As far as I know this is the most common way of hand washing in Europe, or at least in The Netherlands. I can do the dishes for the day, based on a 2-person load of dishes, using just about 5L of water, or at most 10L if I have to re-fill the sink after the water becomes dirtier. Comparing that to 15 liters for a dishwasher makes it look a lot better than the typical strawman argument of comparing it to handwashing dishes under the running tap. I'd love to see some stats on how much water the typical handwash in a sink uses, and how big of an effect that has on how clean the dishes come out (I imagine running the tap for the entire time will probably result in cleaner dishes, tbh).
i was thinking the same thing (im also european)
i remember having to refill the sink whenever it would get too dirty and having to stick my hand in the filthy water to remove the plug and a standard energy certified dishwasher uses 11 litres of water i don't miss handwashing that's for sure
I too am European. Trust me, most people I met do run the tap all the time. Those who don't or try to save water have poor wash results: soapy glasses, oily pans, film on plates. It might work in some countries where people do not eat a lot of starchy or cooked foods, but it definitely doesn't work here in Italy. My dishwasher, on the other hand, has always given me great results
Are you really that fucking short on money that the tiny amount of water you probably don’t even save by hand washing is of concern to you
my tea mug is the final boss for our dishwasher - there is always some residue left so i wash it by hand after it had its bath in the washer :)
When I do the dishes by hand I usually fill one side of the sink(we have two sided sinks) with water as hot as the heater does with lots of dishwasher soap and put the dishes there to soak them for a while, then I scrub all of them on the other side and when that part gets full, I rinse all of them in one go, sometimes I rinse all the cutlery at once because it has cleared off most of the soap by the water of the rest of the dishes. I'm fairly convinced that takes less water that an old dishwasher.
The only think I'm giving the dishwashers is that they're better at *sanitizing* the dishes since they completely scald them, but I'm still convinced by hand gets them better clean off.
Plus there's a lot of things that just break apart if you let the dishwasher do the cleaning
At the house where I have lived most of my life, none of the dishwashers we've had (we've had several of them) have been very good at cleaning dishes so we ALWAYS have to wash off every little spec of grime from the dishes before we load the dishwasher otherwise the dishes end up even dirtier once they get out of the dishwasher.
Hand washing doesn't require a whole gallon per minute. I use like 1/4 cup water with a spritz of soap to scrub a bowl, then maybe 2 cups water to rinse it off. Doesn't even need hot water if you wash dishes immediately after using them, or at least giving them some time to soak.
so a single bowl takes 2 cups and a quarter? thats kinda a lot
Safe to say Technology Connections has created a whole UA-cam subculture of dishwasher enthusiast
When i wash dishes by hand, i dump as many as i can in a tub filled with hot water, and let them sit for 1 minute, to then skrub em. Wouldent this way save more water, than continuously having the tab on?
You still need to rinse
If you reuse the water to rinse, then you're compromising in safety.
Even if you do use less water, it's probably not saving you a whole lot of money
For my rates, 1000 gallons = $4.40
Or 1 gallon = $.0044
Not a lot of savings
@@hector-m-carrillo *DO* you still need to rinse? The only items I rinse are glasses, to avoid soap spots. Anything else goes on the drying rack for some number of minutes before being hand dried. By then most of the water has dripped or evaporated off.
I see no evidence of anyone getting ill from the small amounts of bacteria on dishes, cutlery and crockery.
@@AthAthanasius soap is primarily a surfactant, meaning it works by wrapping dirt/bacteria/oil in bubbles.
This is important because a lot of things like to stick onto surfaces.
Soap does have antimicrobial properties - as in actively killing - but it primarily works through those bubbles.
medicine-yale-edu/news-article/why-soap-works/
Without rinsing, you are just letting everything that was trapped inside the bubbles free; which accomplishes very little. They could have gone down the drain instead.
This is then followed by you using a drying rag to clean the soap off, meaning your dish cloths are gathering bacteria significantly more quickly than the average.
We don't have a lot of data on how many people get sick from this because it's very hard to find out *where* someone got sick from.
But let's just assume the number of people who have gotten sick is >0.
Given that dishwashers are overwhelminglf more likely to be cleaner and cheaper, why would you risk those >0 persons with the worse alternative.
soap is primarily a surfactant, meaning it works by wrapping dirt/bacteria/oil in bubbles.
This is important because a lot of things like to stick onto surfaces.
Soap does have antimicrobial properties - as in actively killing - but it primarily works through those bubbles.
Google why soap works and go to the Yale link
Without rinsing, you are just letting everything that was trapped inside the bubbles free, which accomplishes very little; they could have gone down the drain instead.
This is then followed by you using a drying rag to clean the soap off, meaning your dish cloths are gathering bacteria significantly more quickly than the average.
We don't have a lot of data on how many people get sick from this because it's very hard to find out *where* someone got sick from.
But let's just assume the number of people who have gotten sick is >0.
Given that dishwashers are overwhelmingly more likely to be cleaner and cheaper, why would you risk those >0 persons with the worse alternative.
that tub alone is probably using almost as much (if not more) water as a dishwasher does
I loath emptying the dishwasher more then I do just doing the dishes so I just wash the dishes myself.
It annoys me that the only metric for cleanliness is the amount of germs left. That's sanitazation, not cleaning. I've never heard of someone getting dick from the bacteria left on a dish or spoon. Also dishes will get contaminated the moment you take them out of the dishwasher. It would be nice to show how dishwashers do with hard to clean gunk or oddly shaped items. Also, dishwashers use a lot more soap.
People who have diswashers and don't use them are usually not the ones who bought them, often in rental homes. It's crazy that apartments include a dishwasher before including a washing machine. A lot of people people who have a dishwasher need to drive to clean their clothes. It feels that in the US, dishwashers are really veing forced on everyone. And this video is very based towards convincing people to use them, and only the positive arguments were cherry picked.