You have probably been told to rinse your dishes thoroughly before popping them in the dishwasher, but in reality, this practice could be making you waste tons of water. Unless sticky or hard-to-remove food is caked on to your dishes, rinsing them isn’t necessary. Your dishwasher can handle more than you think, so stop wasting water before your dishwasher even has a chance.

Basically, by rinsing your dishes before you pop them in the dishwasher you are washing them twice, wasting a ton of water, and likely racking up your water bill. Now, during the holidays, you are probably washing more dishes than usual. Now is the perfect time to give this method a test drive and quit unnecessarily wasting water.

Did you know…

• Washing a single load of dishes by hand uses around 27 gallons of water
• Energy Star certified dishwashers use only around 3 galls of water per load
• Households that rinse their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher waste an average of 6,000 gallons of water per year