Dishwasher or washing by hand: which is more energy efficient?

Do you let the water run while doing the dishes? Do you fill your dishwasher to the maximum? Do you rinse the plates before putting them in the dishwasher? Take a closer look at your habits before considering which are the best.

Water consumption

New dishwashers are extremely efficient and use very little water. For 12 people's dishes, new generation dishwashers use ten liters of water. A similar amount of water is used when you run the tap water for one minute. However, it's impossible to clean 12 people's dishes by hand, in such a short period of time.

Depending on your habits as well as the composition of your household, the water expenditure will vary. A single person will be able to do the dishes without seeing their consumption increase. On the other hand, a large family will have every interest in forgetting the manual way of cleaning dishes and reverting to a dishwasher.

Electricity consumption

To be able to perform, the dishwasher uses water and electricity. The machine consumes, in fact, 1 kWh of electricity per cycle, reports Tf1 info. According to ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency), energy use is around 171 kWh/year. This represents approximately 2.3% of the total annual energy consumption of a house.

Is washing up more environmentally friendly? If you do your dishes by hand, using hot water, be aware that you will also use electricity. To heat the water, you need 2.5 kWh of energy… This is equivalent to leaving a hair dryer on for two and a half hours, underlines Tf1 info.

Some useful gestures

1. Prefer the eco cycle for the dishwasher;

2. Avoid hot water for hand washing dishes;

3. Use eco-friendly products for both cleaning methods.

(MH with AsD - Source: Tf1 info - Illustration: Unsplash)

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