Day 16: Dishwasher vs Hand Wash?

Our dishwasher is rubbish so I hardly use it, but if it did work better I'd use it all the time. And it got me thinking about the environmental impact of dishwashers compared to washing up, and also the Eco wash compared to normal.

This article by The Guardian has it all, and it's quite surprising! It claims that a dishwasher can actually have a lower carbon footprint than washing up. The main reason being that "most people (in the UK do their manual washing up using hot water heated by a gas-fired boiler, whereas dishwashers heat water from cold using electricity. A modern boiler can capture more than 90% of the energy in the gas, whereas most of the energy in the fuel used to generate electricity is wasted in generation and transmission, which gives handwashing an obvious head start."

And to clarify the Eco vs Normal, obviously Eco is better than standard setting, but not by a lot - 220g of Co2 per load. The difference in result unfortunately was huge, Eco just didn't come close to giving me a clean load, so I had to then re-wash everything up by hand, defeating the whole purpose!

The best choice is to be conservative with water use, even using cold water where possible, and not use copious amounts of hot water, which I'll make an effort to do. But at least I know when I do use the dishwasher i don't need to feel guilty.

Day 15: Write to your favourite brands who need to change ingredients

After the weekend's discovery of Microbeads and Palm Oil in pretty much everything I consume & use, I was left a bit bewildered as to my next step. I have decided to break it down into single products.

Monday came and I went to get my usual lunch, a Glorious Soup. I was waiting for it to heat up and reading the back when I saw 'Palm oil' listed as an ingredient! I know there are sustainable sources of Palm Oil so I dont just put them on the 'bad list', I decided to email to them instead and find out where they sourced their Palm Oil from. Unfortunately they didn't reply, they haven't replied all week. I am really disappointed that such a seemingly great product would have an ingredient like that in, and I'm still hopeful to hear that it's not the case, but sadly the lack of reply does make me wonder if they just don't know what to say back to me.

I'm going to write them a letter, and see if they can clarify their source of Palm Oil as being sustainable. I'll update this post if I get a reply.