Manual dishwashing process – a pre‐assigned behaviour?

Abstract

Global studies have observed many techniques of manual dishwashing causing different levels of performance and using quite different amounts of water, energy, time and detergent. It is not known, however, if these techniques are pre‐assigned to a person and persist when dishes are washed under different conditions, or are adapted to the specific type of dish‐cleaning process. Here we explored this question in a study with 40 test subjects selected equally from Germany and East European countries by asking them to wash two place settings of dishes with different amounts of soil three times. The results showed that the test subjects did not adapt their washing‐up behaviour to the amount of soil. In general, no significant differences were found in the water, energy and detergent consumption for all test subjects. Only the time used by the German test subjects to wash the fully soiled dishes was significantly longer compared with the dishes with only a quarter the quantity of soil, and no significant difference was observed for all other parts. The only significant difference found between the level of soiling of the dishes was the cleaning result achieved: The less soiled the dishes were, the better the final cleaning result was, and this related to all test subjects. This lends support to the proposition that the consumers did not adapt their washing‐up behaviour to the specific circumstances of the dishwashing job to be done but retained some pre‐assigned behaviour.

Scope of improvement in water usage efficiency in manual dishwashing: A multicountry study by questionnaire survey

“…This kind of response indicates that the awareness to conserve water not necessarily depict the real‐life practice by the participants. In compliance with Gillessen et al (Gilleßen, Berkholz, & Stamminger, ), this survey also indicated that consumers' manual dishwashing practice is somewhat a preassigned behavior. For instance, when asked about the resource dosage, the overall response percentage for “more fat—increase water temperature” was detected to be quite low (31%).…”

Dishwashers: Literature Review to Summarise the Multi-Dimensionality of Sustainable Production and Consumption

“…Richter [30] observed that the percentage of dishes pre-rinsed before loading was as low as 4% in Germany, and as high as 42% in Italy, a practice related perhaps to force of habit, ingrained by observing parental behaviour from childhood days [84], for instance, for East European test participants and by [10] for Greek households, habituated to running-tap manual washing instead of using the soak-in-sink method), or an empirically derived lack of complete trust in the ability of the dishwasher to render good-quality output, irrespective of the degree of soiling of the load of dishes [3]. However, if pre-rinsing is deemed to be important, the dishwasher's 'rinse/rinse and hold' option which could be taken advantage of, and the purpose served with a much lower water footprint too [30].…”

“…Less water would entail its requirement at a higher temperature and more time spent with manual input. Gillessen and co-authors [84] observed that even if 'dS' was changed, test participants, in general, did not seem to change the input-mix conspicuously (save the German participants, who used a lot more time when the dS was increased). In many countries, the factor 'energy' is not available [6], and washing is often done with only room-temperature water, necessitating greater inputs of time and, to some extent, detergents and water.…”

Development of a Method for the Analysis of Microbial Load Reduction Factors on Dishes Cleaned by Hand and by Machine

“…Following this conclusion, it seems now to be possible to compare different hand dishwashing procedures regarding their microbiological reduction factors by just defining the way the washing is done in ap recise procedure as done in this study.A sd ishwashing by hand was found to be done very different from consumer to consumer and from country to country [25 -28] this will allow to judge these differences also regarding their hygienic aspects. Additionally,the here presented procedure may be used in laboratory studies were \ normal" consumers are asked to clean soiled dishes under controlled conditions, like in [25,27,28].…”