How to Conserve Water When Handwashing Dishes

Many people who wash dishes by hand turn on the tap and just let the water run until they’re done washing all the dishes. But this practice wastes water and actually tends to result in less-clean dishes, since the running water from the tap washes away the soap suds before they can do the work of lifting away grease and food from your dishes.

Instead, it’s better to wash dishes in a tub or sink filled with hot, sudsy water. Doing so uses about five times less water than washing dishes under a running tap, and letting the dishes sit in the sudsy water will make them easier to clean.

It might seem that washing dishes by hand would be more environmentally friendly than using a dishwasher. But if you’re careful to run a dishwasher only when it’s fully loaded, today’s energy-efficient dishwashing machines (particularly those manufactured in the mid-1990s or later) actually use much less water than it would take to handwash the same number of dishes.