Tip of the Day - Use Your Common Sense
Posted on July 1, 2008 by
Green advice is great, but not all tips are green for all people or in all situations.
For example, typical green advice would be to wait until your dishwasher is totally full before running it. Sound advice, right? Well, for me it isn’t. I can cram my dishwasher so full of dishes there isn’t any room to spare, but you know what? Half the dishes don’t get cleaned and I have to soak and handwash what is now baked on and/or run it again. My dishwasher is a piece of crap seems to work best when it’s not completely full. Especially if there are bigger items like cookie sheets or a roasting pan in the mix. So for me, running the dishwasher at less than maximum capicity is actually the greener option.
Typical green advice might also direct me to buy a newer, more efficient dishwasher, but that’s not all that green either. The dishwasher we have is only 5 years old. It’s fairly effcient in terms of running through a cycle, it just can’t wash as many dishes at one time. Replacing it means that it will either go to someone else who will keep it in use, learning that a full load is not the way to go, or it will go to dishwasher hell heaven as waste. And that doesn’t even get into all the packaging, shipping, materials, and energy that would go into a new dishwasher.
So as much as my dishwasher is a piece of crap less than ideal, if I think about it, it doesn’t make green sense to trade it in.
What good green advice doesn’t work for your situation?
And no, that’s not my dishwasher, pictured above. That one looks nice.
I think that for me work is a place where it’s much more difficult to be green. For instance, there is a lot that needs to be printed. And even though I take the Metro to work, there is still energy there. Green advice would be to work from home, but that doesn’t make sense for me.
do you rinse before putting dishes in? i find that helps when dishes have not been coming out as clean as once upon a time (not that we have a dishwasher anymore). also, i think it is about…organization in the dishwasher too. yes you can cram stuff in, but if you just fill it, and everything is on its own and not leaning or covering other things, it will work better.
for me, a green tip that would not work for me right now is…probably something about getting a new refrigerator. for 1) i need to ask our land lady how old it is. 2) we just defrosted the freezer, so we’ll see how long it stays that way. 3) the only problem is that it is small…and maybe old, does that mean get a new one because it would be more efficient?
here’s another “bad” green idea: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32732?utm_source=onion_rss_daily
I had to think about this one until I got in the car this afternoon and it hit me like a ton of bricks: it’s recommended to roll down your windows while driving around town rather than use your AC. There’s no way in hell I can do that in the South during the summertime. Same goes for trying to dry clothes outside: it’s kind of hard when the humidity is so high.