StepGreen.org (beta): Enrich your life A sample visualization showing a user's history

Air-dry your dishes washed in the dishwasher.

Last comment by user_1212 on 22 Nov 2011:
Hey, just testing this out
See the rest of this discussion

Description

If using the dishwasher, turn off the "heated dry" option or stop the cycle by opening the door once the rinse cycle is complete. Keep the door open to circulate air and dry dishes faster. The heating element in a dishwasher consumes a significant portion of the electricity used by a dishwasher.

Tags

  • appliance
  • behavior
  • dishes
  • individual
  • repeatable
  • residence
  • year round
See All Existing Tags

Assumptions We Made

Hard to find breakdown of dishwasher energy consumption. Assume that half of energy is for water heating and half is for machine electrical energy, so that a non energy star dishwasher uses about 2.17 kWh/cycle to operate. Assume that half of that is the pump/sensing/timer and half is for heated dry cycle. So, without the air dry, you avoid .5 kWh/cycle.

Impacts

Initial Impacts

Each time you carry out this action, the immediate impacts are:

  • Saves 0.05 dollars
  • Saves 0.54 kilowatt hours
  • Saves 0.74 lbs of CO2

Ongoing Impacts

Some actions also have additional impact over time. For this action, these are:

  • Unknown

Potential Annual Impact

We assume that this action will be carried out daily (about 160 times a year). In this case, in a year you could save:
  • 8.48 dollars
  • 86.88 kilowatt hours
  • 118.08 lbs of CO2
Sign up to commit