Eric Thorne

I read through the learning for the "dishwasher efficiency" action as I've been on the fence as to whether or not I'm doing it wrong. From the article:

"However, there’s a silver lining for resource-savvy hand-washers. If you happen to have a two-basin sink, filling one basin with hot water and the other with cool water, and then soaking and scrubbing your dishes in the first and rinsing them in the second — and then letting them air-dry — was the least energy-intensive method out of all the techniques the researchers tested. The two-basin method only produces 1,610 kilograms of emissions over 10 years. Adopting this technique leads to a 249 percent reduction in emissions for people who wash dishes manually."

While I don't have a two-basin sink, I do not leave the water running while washing each dish; instead, I quickly rinse all the dishes in hot water, turn off the water, lather them all, then rinse off all the soap at once in cold water, turning the water on and off after each dish so that I can put each one away to air dry. I don't usually use that many dishes so this actually saves me time and I think it saves resources as well. If there is a large load that will fill most of the dishwasher, then I will use it on its efficient "smart wash" mode.