Eco-Friendly Cleaning: Dishes
A little over 2 years ago, my husband Will and I packed up our Los Angeles apartment, moved WAY too much stuff into a little blue VW bus and started out on our cross country journey to the magical little city of Asheville, North Carolina. In our camper van that we lovingly named Ethel; we had a little kitchenette with a tiny sink of fresh water to drink from and do the dishes that we created on our stove.
I thought that with fewer dishes to do I would learn to love the chore I had dreaded most of my life. With hindsight, I realize how laughable that is. I began to resist doing them even more when there was room for only one dish at a time. I found myself day-dreaming of adding in one of those teeny microwave-sized dishwashers.
Ethel on the beach in Morro Bay, CA.
Did you know that in a comparison between hand-washing your dishes & using a dishwasher, a dishwasher is often more energy efficient & eco-friendly?
They have the potential to wash more than entire sinks worth of dishes at once, they use less soap, and less water! Using 6-8 gallons of water compared to an average kitchen sink which holds up to 9 gallons of water.
At some point in the hunt for a home in Asheville we decided that a dishwasher wasn’t at the top of our priority list. We hadn’t had one in the Treehouse, our Houston home or the apartment in L.A. so we could do without again, right?
(What was wrong with us?)
Our little cabin outside of Asheville
Before we moved into this house, I am embarrassed to say, my dishwashing routine consisted of me running the sink and washing each dish in its stream. I was privileged to grow up in a home that always had a working dishwasher, so when I first moved into a home without one I was a little clueless & I just let myself stay that way for a really long time.
One day after finishing up a sink full of dishes Will said to me, “You know, for someone who is so conscience about her impact on the environment you sure do waste a lot of water when you wash the dishes.”
Oof. He was right! I did!
So I started changing it up:
filling up a sink with water and concentrated detergent
washing as much as I could until the other side of our dual sink was filled with dishes to be rinsed
Organizing how I put the dishes in the dual sink to make the rinse process more efficient; silverware in a cup or jar so they can be rinsed all at once, etc.
When my January quest to progress my zero-waste lifestyle came around we started looking at other ways we could improve our dish washing routine.
Changing from a sponge to something else was a no brainer for me, I detest sponges. They always end up smelling like mildew. I think they are absolutely disgusting, and there is scientific evidence to back me up. Not to mention they are bad for marine life and they can take up to 52,000 years to biodegrade in a landfill.
For a short period of time we tried the Scrub Daddy. A plastic “smell resistant, scratch free” scour pad. My first thought being that it would be a way to reuse & reduce, like my plastic bristle brush, which has been around forever. I was so wrong. These little sponges quickly break down into flakey plastic pieces that wash down your drain. Contributing to the micro plastic dilemma our world is seeing in our oceans, fresh waterways & our drinking water.
So next we tried these Crown Choice Dishwashing Cloths. We bought one blue all-purpose which is softer & works like the soft side of a kitchen sponge, and one purple scouring pad which is more course for scrubbing off the tougher stuff. I adore these little cloths! They work well, dry quickly and are easy to clean. Just pop ‘em in your dishwasher if your have one, or in the laundry with the towels.
As of right now, these are the only changes we have made to our dishwashing habits. I have found some other things I would like to try out, like these eco-friendly hand-washing detergent recipes. We still use Dawn, which was rated a ‘D’ by the Environmental Working Group on its eco-friendly soaps list and still contributes to the plastic pollution problem…. But hey, real change happens in baby steps. If you are looking for more ways make your routine green there are recipes online for DIY dish detergent for your dishwasher like this one from Happy Money Saver.
What things are you doing to make your cleaning routine more environmentally friendly?
Sending all my love,
K. Ezzell
"One individual cannot possibly make difference alone. It is the individual efforts, collectively, that makes a noticeable difference- all the difference in the world." -Jane Goodall
