Yes - this is what I use - mainly because I only have a sink-and-a-half - the plastic bowl inside the sink takes a lot less water to fill, and allows me to tip things down the side so they still drain away.
So washing dishes in this scenario consists of:
-Scrape any solid food from plates, etc
-Rinse plates under running water (while waiting for the hot to come through the pipes), stack them to one side
-Run a bowl of hot water with dish washing liquid in it (I use very hot water and wear rubber gloves, mostly)
-Wash items in the bowl and stack them into a wire rack on the draining board - starting with the cleanest items (drinking glasses) and ending with the dirtiest (pans). If anything is dirty enough to mess up the water, it will get another rinse before it goes into the bowl - using a sponge or two full of the washing up water, over the half sink or between the edge of the main sink and the bowl.
-Large batches of dish washing may require changes of water (but before discarding the first lot, I’ll typically use it to pre-wash any very encrusted pans etc)
-After washing, the stacked, washed items are rinsed in a bowl of very hot, clear water. drained, dried and put away.
In many cases(/households) though, I happen to know that the rinsing stage is just omitted - and the drained items will just be wiped dry with a teatowel and put away. This neglect causes horror and consternation to some people - I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Sure, there’s the possibility of a tiny amount of soap residue on the crockery, but it’s really insignificant.
This is the kind of washing-up basin I use, but mine is slightly longer. So let’s say it’s 30cm x 40cm x 20cm => 24,000cc or 2.4 litres. There are 3.79 litres in one US gallon, so that’s 0.63 US gallons per fill. If I have a large load, I might refill it once during washing up. So, if anything, I might be underestimating how much water I use.
Not rinsing washing-up after handwashing is a bugbear of mine. I can’t stand watching people take plates out of icky washing up water and just putting it to drain with suds and often visible particles of food trickling down it.
I always rinse under hot running water from the tap if I’m hand-washing crockery. But mostly I use the dishwasher, which I am sure uses much less water than my overly fussy washing-up method.
I was the person with the 6.5 gallon cite. As I mentioned in the other thread, I have a fairly good sized double bowl sink. I finally got off my ass and measured my sink and did the math.
The dishwasher wins in a walk. If I fill both side of my sink up, it takes over 20 gallons of water. :eek:
Yeah, it surprised me also. For your info, this is my sink. Big but it fits in a standard sink cut out.
There is no question in my mind as to which is more green when it comes to saving water.
This was the standard way we did it (for kitchen utensils, pots, pans, etc) at a very high-end restaurant I worked in. Diner’s plates and silverware would go through the dishwasher, but anything the kitchen used was cleaned using the two sink method.
Do a search for it on the boards. While I’m sure there aren’t as many environmental types to decry the horrors of nuclear power no this board, I am sure they are here.
Maybe modern dishwashers are more energy efficient than most methods of handwashing, but see… There are old dishwashers out there. If the old dishwasher is still working, it’ll be there for as long as it lives, even though more energy efficient models are out there (same for most household appliances, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).
Not to mention that some people (my old roomate used to do this) rinse their wares before putting them on the dishwasher. Uh, what? It is the same as doing a handwashing!!! That is not energy efficient, that’s doubling the waste!!!
I was taught to put some soapy water on a bowl (or whatever other container you found), use that to scrub away a bunch of dirty dishes and utensils, and then use hot water to rinse it out and set it away to dry. Not much water was used unless you kept the water running all the time.
And, in fact, some people may like the older ones better because the new energy efficient ones don’t dry as well. Sort of like the new water conserving toilets that don’t flush as well.
So, uh, why do you have to fill up your sink all the way to hand wash dishes? If you only need 4 gallons, use 4. Don’t be a slave to the sink manufacturers!
Most restaurants have an industrial dishwasher that subjects the dishes to an overhead spray of scalding hot water, rinsing them thoroughly. You don’t know what you are talking about.
Not the pots and pans. Both places I’ve worked at as a dishwasher did pots and pans the old fashioned way. Granted, neither used this “2-basin” process: 1 used a 3-basin process, 1 to wash, 1 to rinse, and 1 to “sanitize” (with an iodide-based sanitization agent, scare-quoted cause it was also to re-rinse, really,) the other used two steps, one person would wash and the other would rinse but neither used a basin.
In neither case would the pots and pans go through the Hobart (except when the bosses weren’t looking and the regular dish duty was light,) since they were greasier than the plates etc they would foul up the Hobart.
I don’t fill them all the way up unless I have to. But even at half full each the dishwasher is more efficient as far as water usage goes. Half full on my sink is about 10 gallons, my dishwasher uses at the most 6.5 gallons. yabob I can tell you my energy star Miele not only gets them plenty dry, they are plenty hot when they get done. The only thing I notice that is different about this DW and my previous ones is that the Miele is quieter, uses less water, and cleans better.
I can guarantee you that there is no way you can do a better (or even the same) job of cleaning the same amount of dishes by hand using the same amount of water as my Miele does when fully loaded.
