Posts Tagged ‘Dishes’

Lenox Butterfly Meadow Colors Fruit Dishes, Set of 4

• 4-piece set of Butterfly Meadow Colors fruit dishes; 5-1/4-inch diameter
• Crafted from fine porcelain with delicate motifs and a summery palette
• Design includes a different border color and central butterfly on each piece
• Coordinates with extensive Butterfly Meadow dinnerware and décor collection
• Safe in microwave and dishwasher; matching plates and mugs also available

Product Description
Four different butterflies – and four different colored bands – distinguish these porcelain fruit dishes. There’s a tiger swallowtail, orange sulphur, monarch, and blue butterfly. And pastel bands of green, pink, blue, and yellow.

Lenox Butterfly Meadow Colors Fruit Dishes, Set of 4

Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Automatic Dishwashing Liquid, Lemon Verbena, 48-Ounce Bottles

• Case of six 48-ounce bottles of lemon verbena scented dishwasher detergent (total of 288 ounces)
• Includes a pleasant fragrance to fill your kitchen with freshness
• For sparkling clean dishes, glasses, and flatware
• Not tested on animals
• Phosphate-free; biodegradable

Product Description
Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Automatic Dishwashing Liquid helps the dishwasher get dishes, glasses and flatware sparkling clean, with a unique fragrance designed to fill the kitchen with the fresh scent of lemon verbena.

Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Automatic Dishwashing Liquid, Lemon Verbena, 48-Ounce Bottles

Technology Wins When It Comes To Washing Dishes

Want to hear some great news? It’s more environmentally friendly to use a dishwasher than wash dishes by hand! So throw out those marigolds, get the plumber in, install a dishwasher and get ready for more “me time”.
Recent research, approved by the University of Bonn in Germany claims that the average household does two to three hand washes a day. Including rinsing this uses around 60 litres of water daily. A good modern dishwasher uses only 12 litres per wash (some manufacturers claim their machines use only 9 or 10 litres), which takes care of a normal day’s dishwashing, so even if you have friends round to double the number of dirty dishes, technology still wins.
A UK Government body called Waterwise has added to the dishwasher’s support by stating that hand washing dishes accounts for around 10% of a household’s water use whereas homes with a dishwasher can cut this figure down to 2% – UK wide if everyone used a dishwasher we could save a quarter of a billion litres of water each day.
What the research doesn’t cover is the environmental cost of manufacturing dishwashers and running them – and of course getting rid of them when they’ve done their time. But if you get an A rated machine then you’ll know that compared with other machines on the market, yours is using less energy when washing and drying your kitchenware than most.
And you can further reduce your environmental impact by always making sure you only use the dishwasher when its full and by using economy settings when dishes aren’t very greasy and don’t need piping hot water. Also, look into the new environmentally friendly plant based detergents which are eco-friendly.
And if you haven’t got the space or money to buy a dishwasher then you can cut down on water and energy consumption in several ways. Use the plug instead of cleaning things in running water. Scrape off excess food in to the bin or your composter to keep the water clean for as long as possible and to avoid soaking. Wash glasses and hardly used crockery first in the cleanest water, and the greasiest items last (but don’t leave it too long as you’ll need the hot water!). And instead of rinsing each item individually, dunk them in a sink of clean water together.
So what about other appliances? Well, we haven’t found any equivalent research about washing machines, but when we hand wash we tend to wash items individually whereas an awful lot of clothes can be put in a washing machine. Obviously it helps if you put the machine on a low temperature setting as heating the water uses large amounts of energy, and try and use plant based detergents or wash balls to cut down on the chemicals you release into the environment.
Tumble dryers are the big energy users. There really is no use for them in the summer if you have a balcony or a garden. The sun will even bleach your whites and drying this way is completely free – all you need is a long plastic cord and some pegs. On the occasions when you feel you can’t avoid using a tumble dryer use drying balls – they come in pairs and cut down on the time needed to dry your washing thereby saving energy. They also help to soften the fabrics.
When you’re next doing your household chores think about the energy and water consumption you will require. Get a plumber to install environmentally less damaging appliances and if you fill them up before switching them on you’ll be maximising on the benefits of using them. Manufacturers are already producing machines that use less far less water than old fashioned hand washing – think what other advantages might be in the pipeline.

GDWF100RBB GE® Built-In Dishwasher – Black

Product Description
Bright annealed stainless steel interior ? Lustrous interior looks great and stands up to stainsPureClean wash system with 5-stage filtration ? Multiple filtration levels ensure clean dishesCleanSensor™ ? A tiny laser measures soil levels and water temperature to adjust to the ideal cycle timeSaniWash cycle ? Special cycle reduces 99.999% of harmful germs and bacteria2/4/8-hour Delay Start ? Set the time to wash dishes at a later timeNylon racks ? Durable racks are designed to resist rust and secure dishesApproximate Overall Dimensions: Height 34″ Width 24″ Depth 24 3/4″

GDWF100RBB GE® Built-In Dishwasher – Black

Cleaning Up After Dinner: Save Time And Energy, Hand Washing Dishes Wastes Energy!

Energy efficient dishwashers can clean your dishes using less water and electricity than if you were to clean them yourself. That’s what efficiency experts claim. But is this really true?I didn’t think so until recently. I can clean the dinner dishes myself using about four liters of water, while energy saving dishwashers use around 4 gallons to a full load, plus all that electricity to heat the water and pump it around.I would like to share my techniques for cleaning dishes by hand using as little water and energy as possible. But remember that, for most people, energy saving dishwashers are a more efficient option than hand-washing, as long as you use the dishwasher properly.If you observe a typical North American clean dishes by hand, it’s easy to see why an efficient dishwasher beats washing by hand just about every time. Some people let the tap run continuously as they wash; some fill the sink with warm water and run cold water in the second sink for rinsing; some are constantly pumping dish soap into a sponge. When you add up all the energy that went into warming the water, manufacturing the dish soap, and even the energy for purifying and pumping the water to your home, it can wind up being a lot more energy than you would imagine.When people think about a dishwasher, they usually think of the electricity used to pump water around inside. They might think that they’ll save all that energy if they clean dishes themselves. In fact, pumping the water uses less energy than heating the water – only 20% of the total, compared to 80% for heating when you consider the heating that takes place in your hot water tank and in the dishwasher itself.You might think that hand-cleaning dishes would at least save you the remaining 20% of the energy used for pumping. But because people typically use much more water than ENERGY STAR dishwashers, the end result is more energy use in hand-washing than when using a good quality dishwasher. (Older models use up to twice as much hot water as newer dishwashers, so you might outperform that old goldenrod-colored 1970’s model!)Efficient dishwashers can clean dishes with a very small amount of water by doing two things you cannot do as a hand washer: Heating the water to 140F – because hot water is better at getting grease and food waste off dishes; and pumping the water at high pressure, which blasts food off your dishes more effectively than you can do with a scrub brush, using a very small amount of water to do so.Where ENERGY STAR dishwashers are not so energy efficient is where people sabotage the energy saving features of the appliance, by pre-rinsing, keeping their hot water tank temperature too high, using too heavy duty a cycle, making excessive use of the rinse-and-hold or heated-dry features, running the unit half empty, and using too much dishwasher detergent.It is possible to do better than a dishwasher in terms of energy consumption. Whether it’s worth the effort is another matter. Consider the fact that energy efficient dishwashers with an ENERGY STAR logo can do a full load for the energy equivalent of less than 1.55 kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity (that includes both the energy for mechanical and heat). At a typical cost of ten cents per kwh, and assuming you wash the dishes using cold water, the most you would save is about a dollar for every six loads.And this is for a full dishwasher load – which is supposed to hold 6-8 complete place settings as well as 6 serving pieces. Assuming bread plate, dinner plate, bowl, cup and saucer, knife, fork and spoon, that’s about 72 items cleaned, so you’ll save about a cent for every five items if you wash by hand and use no energy.Let’s assume that you really do want to clean dishes yourself. I actually like washing dishes; it’s a good time for thinking, plus it cleans my fingernails! How can you wash dishes by hand using as little energy as possible? Here are my pointers:Never drain used water. After you’ve cleaned a load of dishes by hand, or rinsed vegetables, leave the water for later rinsing. Use this gray water to pre-rinse the dishes to remove most of the grease and other food residues. That way, when the time comes to clean, you won’t need as much water.Go easy on the tap. Run the water for short bursts, only when you really need water.Use aerators on your kitchen faucet. You can rinse dishes effectively while saving water using an aerator, which injects a stream of air into the water.Use cold or just lukewarm water. Where I live in Central America, no one washes dishes in hot water, but granted, the cold water tap is a balmy 70F. This just goes to show that you can, at the very least, wash in lukewarm rather than hot.Start with an inch of warm water. Wash dishes in that, and rinse in a second sink with cold water. Or stack the dishes on the counter after washing, and then rinse them all in cold after you finish the soap wash.Just like your mom taught you, start by washing the cleanest dishes – glasses, cups, cutlery, plates, leaving the dirty pots and pans for last.By following these techniques I can wash dishes from a meal for four people in less than a gallon of fresh water. But is it worth all the effort? And how many people can really outperform the efficiency of a well-built, energy saving dishwasher?If you think you can beat a new dishwasher, here’s convincing evidence that modern efficient dishwashers not only clean dishes using less energy, water and detergent than people do, but also get the dishes cleaner.A study in Germany asked over 100 subjects to clean 12 dinner place settings of dirty dishes. Each volunteer was left alone in a washing area and observed by camera; energy, water and detergent use were tracked. The dishes were then inspected for cleanliness using an international cleanliness standard. The same test was repeated with ENERGY STAR dishwashers.The efficient dishwashers consumed 15 liters of water and 1-2 kwh of energy to clean 12 place settings, while only two of the 113 hand-washers consumed less than 20 liters of hot water. (Over a third of the hand-washers consumed over 100 liters of water each!). However, 70 of those tested did manage to use no than 2 kwh of energy – including 27 who used 1 kwh or less.The way I read the results of this study, you can match the efficiency of ENERGY STAR dishwashers, or even be slightly more energy efficient. But the amount of energy saved is so small that it doesn’t justify the extra effort. The human hand-washers took at least 40 minutes to do the load, while the energy efficient dishwashers needed only a quarter hour of human work for loading, starting, and unloading the dishes. Considering that the US EPA/DOE rates dishwasher efficiency assuming 215 loads of dishes per year, a typical hand washer would be adding 25 x 215 minutes, or 89 hours of work to their year. That’s more than two weeks of 9-to-5 work out of your life!You are probably better off to save that effort and look at other things you can do to save energy. Just think how efficient your house would be if you devoted an extra 89 hours a year towards weather-stripping, sealing air leaks, and changing light bulbs to more energy saving lights. Or how much more relaxed you’ll be by using your dishwasher. You just gained two extra weeks of free time!