Oddbean new post about | logout
 A TV ad says it's OK to run a dishwasher even when it's only partially full, claiming that it uses less water than handwashing.

In the fine print, it says that running a faucet for 11 minutes uses 24 gallons of water. That may be, but what kind of animal runs the faucet on full blast the whole time they're hand-washing dishes? The same ones that run it while they're brushing their teeth, I guess. 
 @edbba727 Hand washing dishes is a bit of a lost art, I'm afraid. It used to be you'd wash and your glasses as you filled up the wash basin, then clean silverware in the full wash basin and rinse into the filling rinse basin, and then do the plates in the dirtying water and finally get the pots and pans clean enough. Now it's just "what do you mean fill up the sink with water? 
 @edbba727 A related thought I had the other day: the dishes need to be rinsed prety well for the dishwasher to be able to get them clean. This water use is not part of the calculation, but it's probably way more than what the machine itself uses.