Another Triumph for the Greens
To go with toilets that don’t flush and light bulbs that don’t light, we now have dishwashers that don’t wash.
My dishwasher is the Bosch SHE58C—an amazing machine. Stainless-steel front, concealed controls, six cycles to choose from. The manual runs a brisk 63 pages. When we got the Bosch, I read it cover to cover, highlighting and annotating as I went, marking the manufacturer’s preferred method of arranging dishes and the proper way to sit utensils in the dedicated wash basket. I took some pains to relay this information to my wife, though it did not please her as much as I imagined it would.
At first, my Bosch was wonderful. Quiet as a wind’s whisper, the dishes were so clean you could eat off of them. But a few months ago I started noticing problems. A fork would come out with food between the tines; a glass would have bits of grime stuck to the bottom. Surely this was a fluke? Alas, no. My dishwasher no longer shines. What went wrong?.....
...The problem, though, isn’t the dishwashers. It’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, America’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink.
"The New York Times noted that on the review section of the website for Cascade—Procter & Gamble’s market-leading brand—ratings plummeted after the switch, with only 11 percent of consumers saying they would recommend the product. One woman in Florida told National Public Radio that she called Procter & Gamble to complain about how its detergent no longer worked. The customer rep told her to consider handwashing the dishes instead."
...Product complaints increased by 600 percent, consumers drove across state lines to get the original formula, and the company took losses of $300 million on the effort.
What’s more, it wasn’t clear how environmentally friendly phosphate-free detergents would be on balance. Because they’re less robust, they often cause people to wash dishes by hand, wasting water. (Given the efficiency of modern dishwashers, handwashing tends to use far more water.) Or people might run the dishwasher twice, wasting water and electricity. It was the phosphorus in detergents, after all, that allowed modern dishwashers to function well using smaller amounts of cooler water. In other words, the issue came down to trade-offs. Which environmental value matters most: reduction of energy consumption, conservation of water, or elimination of phosphorus?...
...The study was a useful reminder that all science is settled. Until it’s not.
Read the article at the above link and see how helpful the Government has been to keep our dishes dirty and sewers clean.
Watch out for a new D. O. D. (Dept. of Dysentery).
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