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by olafalo 2378 days ago
> Less water [use], sure, but more electricity

Well, no. As dishwashers get more energy efficient, they tend to use less water as well[0]. And dishwashers have steadily been using less electricity and water.

> One in five homes have just stopped using their dishwashers altogether

The survey that is linked here[1] says "less than once per week," not "stopped altogether". The writer of the linked article suggests that the reason is the misconception that washing dishes by hand uses less energy, so people (especially in smaller or poorer households) are washing dishes by hand instead of using their dishwasher.

> Thanks to federal mandates, all phosphates were eliminated from detergent

Yep, those federal jerks hate us citizens having clean dishes! Or, wait, turns out those phosphates are environmentally damaging, which sounds like a good enough reason to me to remove them from detergent.

Moving on to a more anecdotal response - I have literally never heard anyone complain about their dishwasher not working. I have never had or used a dishwasher that didn't clean the heck out of whatever was in it. The idea that "dishwashers are bad nowadays" is completely foreign to me. And, personally, it does strike me as pretty weird that Trump and the article author consider dishwashers to be a "feminist issue."

[0]: https://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2008/data/papers/1_123.p...

[1]: https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/news/survey-says-1-in-5...

1 comments

I also wonder how much of the lack of dishwasher usage is at all tied to trends of people eating out or getting delivery. I simply don't produce as many dishes as I used to when I can get something like Freshly, that comes in a container ready to be heated up, or Postmates where I don't need to plate anything. That's ignoring actually going out to a restaurant or something like that. If those trends have increased like they have for me, then people simply don't need to do dishes as often as they used to.