If asked the question: ‘what saves more water – washing by hand or using a dishwasher?’, how many of us would get the answer correct? My gut response was that washing dishes by hand saved more water – the same as washing a car with a bucket instead of using a water hose or pressure washer. But I’d be wrong…and I imagine I would no be alone!
The fact is that London could save as much as 16 billion litres of fresh water annually if everyone used a dishwasher instead of doing the dishes by hand. The amount of water is equivalent to 6,350 Olympic swimming pools. This is one of the findings in the Electrolux WaterSavings study (www.electrolux.com/WaterSavings) presented by Electrolux ? the home appliances manufacturer.
The study is based on results from the University of Bonn, Germany. The study shows that on average 10.5 litres of water is consumed per person per day when washing a daily amount of dishes by hand, while the best Electrolux dishwasher only uses 2.27 litres of water to wash the same amount. Moreover, time is saved. Since there is less water to heat up, less energy is also needed.
This means a household in UK could save more than 7,000 litres annually by using an efficient dishwasher. If all households in UK today that are doing the dishes by hand changed to a modern dishwasher, a total of more than 125 billion litres could be saved. If all households in the 22 European countries studied were to use an efficient dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand, 990.2 million cubic metres of water could be saved! This is more than, for instance, the total annual use of water from supplies in Denmark.
Today, 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate clean water to meet their basic daily needs, and 2.6 billion do not have proper sanitation facilities, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) within the UN. The UN warns that by the year 2025, between 2.6 and 3.1 billion people could be living in either water-scarce or water-stressed conditions. This already poses a serious threat to health and welfare, and also to agriculture and industry.
