Conserve Water with the Neat Method of Dishwashing

By now it’s clear: Fresh water is a limited resource. And we need to do what we can to conserve it. While the average Canadian household consumes approximately 329 litres of water a day (and in the U.S., that figure is between 80 and 100 gallons), we can use every tip we can get to cut back on the water we waste. Let’s take dishwashing--something most of us do multiple times a day, for example. Running the average kitchen sink faucet for just four minutes can use the same amount of water as a conventional dishwasher, according to ConserveH20. In this blog, we share a simple tip for dishwashing that can help you save a considerable amount of water every time you clean a dish.  

How do you wash your dishes?

We recently surveyed the AllOrganic office to ask our team members how they wash their dishes. The majority of us run the faucet, fill up the sink with water and soap, then wash the dishes in the soap. Then we drain and refill the sink with clean water to rinse. Others of us simply run the faucet while each dish is washed, then rinsed. Still others do a combination of the two processes when they wash their dishes. 

Just think of all that water going down the drain. . . .

Keeping the faucet running is a surefire way to waste water. Equally as wasteful is filling a sink up to the top when only a small amount of water is needed. That’s why we recommend the Neat Method of dishwashing. This process minimizes the use of water in the dishwashing process, and uses dishwashing detergent to its maximum efficiency. 

The Neat Method of Dishwashing

Step 1: Pump your dish detergent directly on the dish or sponge or brush.

Step 2: Agitate the detergent, removing soils.

Step 3: Rinse dish in a small amount of water.

What we love about this method of dishwashing is that it offers the opportunity to save water when you do not dilute your dish soap, allowing the dish soap to be used to maximum efficiency. You also save water because you do not fill your sink up with gallons of water to be used to wash and rinse the dishes.

Say Bye to Bubbles

Do you love it when your sink is sudsy? Do bubbles make you feel like things are getting clean? If they do, you’re not alone. But you’re also wrong.

 A common misconception among our officemates, as well as the general public, is that the appearance of bubbles when washing dishes signifies cleaning. In fact, bubbles are just a visual cue we associate with clean. In reality, bubbles are soap molecules trapping air particles. The soap molecules that have not trapped air particles are what’s doing the cleaning work, removing soil and making your dishes shiny. The Neat Method of dishwashing won’t produce many bubbles, but it certainly will save water and allow your soap to work to its fullest potential.

Unfortunately, many soap manufacturers add additional chemicals to their products that produce bubbles, for appearance’s sake. Those additional chemicals can be corrosive when they go down the drain and into our water stream. The AllOrganic dish soap is a plant-based formula that has no added chemicals, is readily biodegradable and safe for septic and greywater systems. When you use a dish soap made from 100% all organic, plant-based ingredients, you can rest easy the detergent that does go down the drain will not harm our precious water streams.