Dishwashers? Really? Newer dishwashers are more efficient and use less water than hand-washing: https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-washing-which-is-greener.html
Be very wary of these comparisons as they are usually made with totally unfair criteria. The article you linked as so often with dishwasher comparisons, do so with someone just running the hot tap and washing their dishes under it - not filling up a bowl and washing everything in that. They also only compare a very specific number of items to obtain a 'sweet-spot' in the dishwashers favour. They also often concentrate on water usage and accidentally forget about the electric motor(s) energy use. They never, ever mention the cost of manufacture of the item itself.
My LG uses 3.7 gallons per load. Our family of 4 eats all meals at home, and we typically do one load of dishes per day. Could I hand clean a full day of dishes using less than 4 gallons of water? Yes, if I'm super fastidious. But this takes forever and, to be honest, either the dishes aren't going to really get clean (e.g. they are "camping clean"), or I'm going to get lazy and use a lot more water.
Also, the electric motors on these things are quite small and use a tiny amount of electricity. Most of the energy consumption goes to heating the water, which improves the effectiveness of the cleaning. My EnergyStar dishwasher uses ~0.5kWh per load, which is a very small amount. For comparison, this is about the amount of energy my coffee maker uses if I leave the warming plate on for 1 hour, or about the same as running an electric hot plate for 20 minutes.
Should also take into account dishwashers have killed the occasional person when they trip and land on upturned knifes and of course the few hundred fires dishwashers start every year and that dishwashers gasket tends to get fungus and other nasties growing all over it.
LOL, killer dishwashers :) Tripping and falling on an upturned knife in my dishwasher, or my dishwasher catching fire, are so low on my list of safety concerns that I don't even consider these worth the brain space. I'm much more concerned, for good reasons, with drivers who may kill me while riding my bike around town, and the dangers related to earthquakes.
That said - they are very impressive pieces of engineering - just wanted to say beware of reading articles from dishwasher manufacturers or articles where they have drawn their comparison data from manufacturers !
And I would say, beware assumptions that doing something manually, or the old fashioned way, is always better or more virtuous. Certainly dishwashers of old were wildly inefficient, but the newer EnergyStar models are really quite good. And if having a dishwasher means you eat in more often w/o disposable containers/cutlery (e.g. to-go boxes, etc.) then it's a win-win. For the vast vast majority of people, including Mustacians, a dishwasher is a no brainier in terms of efficiency and time savings.
