Many cafés and fast food places these days provide disposable dishes and cutlery when you’re eating in. This used to infuriate me, but it seems to be improving slightly now as the trend has moved towards using compostable dishes instead of plastic ones.
However, it’s still waste. It makes me wonder, what is more costly in the long run? Providing customers with compostable items or running hot dishwashers and using soap and water all day to reuse dishes?
Aha, the question of whether washing by hand or using a dishwasher is better! Another person on this thread made a good point about the amount of uses a ceramic plate needs in order to offset the carbon footprint of its production.
So, I suppose the real question is can we use a dishwasher enough times to offset the carbon footprint of its production? I would say yes, and if we can assume that a dishwasher loads is less intensive than the same load washed by hand, then the dishwasher is better in the long run.
But what do we do with the dishwasher when it’s no longer usable?..
I would love to see someone do a break down of this cost. I can not imagine all the metal plastic rubber aluminum electronics being made and shipped all over the world is going to come out ahead of of a stainless steel sink that can last a life time. Dishwashers now only last 9 to 12 years or something now.
I feel like there is an equation in here