USE THAT DISHWASHER.

• Author: Britschgi, Christian
• Position: REGULATION

DISH SOAP MAKER Procter & Gamble has an odd new ad campaign urging folks to "do it" every night by loading their dishwashers instead of wasting time and water on handwashing.

Persuading people to put crusty dishes in a machine that will clean them seems like it shouldn't require sexual innuendos crafted by Madison Avenue. Yet survey data show that nearly one in five Americans who own a dishwasher don't use it.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration periodically asks Americans about their energy use. In its 2001 survey, 16 percent of respondents said they used their dishwashers less than once a week. That number rose to 18 percent by 2009, and it was about 20 percent in the last two surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2020.

The increase in unused dishwashers is correlated with federal energy efficiency standards that have made newer models less effective. In the last 20 years, the U.S. Department of Energy has twice tightened those standards, which limit the amount of water and electricity that dishwashers use. Manufacturers have met those standards by building machines that recirculate less water over a longer wash cycle.

Data compiled by D.C.'s Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) show that average cycle times rose from just over an hour when the first standards were adopted in 1987 to nearly two-and-a-half hours as of 2018. In complaints collected by CEI, many...