Is there a real difference in water and electricity consumption? Personally, I don’t use a lot of water to wash my dishes (by hand), but maybe I should install a flow meter to make sure.
What is your opinion on the subject? Do you have any evidence or studies available that could confirm your intuition? Or do you have other alternatives in mind?
I have read comparisons in the past. I don’t have them to hand, but the conclusion was that dishwashers were more efficient in terms of water use and energy. However, the type of hand-washing that it was being compared to was itself a very inefficient style of washing (tap running continuously? two full sinks for rinsing? I can’t recall, but not the way that we do).
So handwashing the way we do is probably more efficient but it seems that there isn’t THAT much in it either way, and given the time taken and that we cook from scratch almost all the time, we use a dishwasher for the vast bulk of stuff.