Dishwasher/handwashing: It's all in the (hot) water

To hand-wash dishes, or not, which is greener?

There are so many folks out there with half-baked opinions that you might never get to a supportable answer.

That said, here's ours, which contradicts popular counter-intuitive “green” thinking: If you have a solar water heater, and you're an efficient washer, hand-washing has dramatically fewer environmental impacts.

You can waste a lot of water before you overcome the cost of the electricity for the washer's electric motor and the environmental cost of building and shipping that dishwashing machine.

On the other hand, if you're paying a utility to heat your water, either alternative will be an expensive one, and the judgment comes down to how much more hot water is used in your style of hand dishwashing than the dishwasher you select.

All kinds of green gurus are arguing that running a dishwasher has less impact on the environment. Mostly, they justify this position with a deplorable bit of analysis—they consider the amount of water used, and ignore electrical costs and the inherent environmental cost of the existence of the dishwasher.

Here's an example from a Hawai'i newspaper. The average dishwasher uses 8.7 gallons of water per load, while hand washing can use 10 to 20 gallons, depending on whether you leave the water running. Therefore the dishwasher is greener.

Here's an About.com argument that dishwashers are greener than hand washing.

They are, of course, both wrong in almost every scenario. [They're pretty much only right if 1) you're using a very efficient dishwasher, 2) you're a very inefficient hand-washer, and 3) you're using fossil fuels to heat your water.]

The best electric dishwashers can do the job with five gallons, more or less, and the worst with 15 or so, but there's far more to dishwashing than water.

Let's call the detergent use even. And for the purposes of this assessment, let's call water heating even, assuming you have a solar water heater and aren't drawing electrical power to heat water.

In that case, figuring a 1000-watt dishwasher that runs for an hour, you'll pay electric costs of $.30 to $.40 per load, depending on where in Hawai'i you live. And the water costs about 3 cents for 10 gallons. (The electrical cost of pumping the water out of the ground is built into this price.)

Anybody paying attention? You can use two 55-gallon drums full of water hand-washing before it costs as much as the electrical cost alone of one dishwasher load.

That calculation is child's play. It gets trickier for those who don't have a solar water heater, and who are paying the electric utility or the gas company to heat water. From various sources, I've come up with about .2 kilowatt hours to heat a gallon of water from tap cold to dishwashing hot.

A 20-gallon hand-wash then costs 6 cents for the water and $1.20 for electricity to heat it, for $1.26. An efficient 10-gallon hand-wash costs $.63. For the dishwasher, the total costs depends in part on how much of the heated water comes via the household water heater and how much from the washer. Let's say $.30 to $.40 for electricity plus a $.32 hot water bill (5 gallons plus the water cost)--about the same as an efficient hand-wash, and less than an inefficient hand-wash.

But the upshot is that if you use a lot of hot water, and you're using electricity to heat it, it's going to be a costly venture either way. If you're an inefficient hand washer and you're paying the utility to heat your water, the dishwasher might indeed make more sense. (If you use more efficient fuel-based water heating like gas or heat pumps, the calculation shifts back toward hand-washing.)

But if you're using the sun to heat your water, you can be awfully inefficient as a dishwasher before you overcome the significant cost of running the machine.

I like this note from Dave Brook, energy extension agent at the Oregon State University: “Studies showing an advantage to one method usually assume less-efficient practices for the other—such as leaving rinse water flowing continuously when washing by hand. Because there’s no clear advantage of one method over the other, the main benefit of automatic dishwashers is convenience, not energy savings. Many people find dishwashers are a great place to store dirty dishes out of sight before washing them.”

As a University of Bonn study says, “while on the water there is a clear advantage of using a dishwasher, on energy in real life the situation is more complex as distribution and generation losses have to be taken into account as well.”

But once again, all those assessments assume you're paying to heat the water. If you're not, the choice is abundantly clear: wash 'em by hand and your environmental impact is minimal.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Barefoot beats most running shoes

One of the key recommendations for runners has always been, “Wear good shoes.”

New research is now suggesting that may be bad advice.

Not that you should wear bad shoes, but rather, perhaps, that you should wear no shoes at all. Of course, that's problematic for a number of reasons, even in fair Hawai'i.

Scientists comparing running in shoes and running barefoot have found that while shoes protect the feet in some ways, standard running shoe designs also dramatically change stresses on the joints of the lower body.

The press release is here. and the actual report is here.

The findings suggest that standard running shoes, with raised heels to reduce impact on landing and wide heels to prevent pronation, create significant changes in torque on the ankles, knees and hips.

The study was published in the PM&R: The journal of injury, function and rehabilitation under the title, "The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques." Authors are D. Casey Kerrigan, MD, Jason R. Franz, MS, Geoffrey S. Keenan, MD, Jay Dicharry, MPT, Ugo Della Croce, PhD, and Robert P. Wilder, MD. (PM&R: The journal of injury, function and rehabilitation, Volume 1, Issue 12 (December 2009), published by Elsevier. )

The researchers ran subjects on a treadmill, with standard running shoes, and without. Subjects were 68 individuals who ran regularly at least 15 miles a week, about half of whom were men and half women.

Their findings indicated that the running shoes transferred significant amounts of rotational force on the leg joints above the foot, when compared to barefoot running.

One message from this work might be to run barefoot. But broken glass, nails, sharp rocks and the rest of the debris along roadside running routes could make that a hazardous adventure.

The authors suggest the work could inform the design of future running shoes, to reduce the joint torque issues: “It is unknown to what extent actual joint contact forces could be affected by compliance that a shoe might provide, a potentially valuable design characteristic that may offset the observed increases in joint torques.”

I confess that I was a longtime barefooter. Old-timers in Hawai'i and particularly on Kauai may remember the “barefoot reporter.” I started wearing running shoes when I started running marathons and later triathlons, primarily for protection from roadside debris. The running days are long over, due largely to foot, ankle and knee issues. And now, I wonder, “Was it the shoes?”

I hesitate to take that concern too far. We were designed to walk and run generally on forgiving natural surfaces, while much running today is on solid concrete and asphalt. You can feel the difference.

The authors of the shoe/foot suggest manufacturers consider changes in popular shoe design.

“The development of new footwear designs that encourage or mimic the natural compliance that normal foot function provides while minimizing knee and hip joint torques is warranted. Reducing joint torques with footwear completely to that of barefoot running, while providing meaningful footwear functions, especially compliance, should be the goal of new footwear designs.”

Does that mean new running shoes will look like the interesting, strange Vibram Five-Fingers?
Probably not, but it might be a step in the right direction. Here's one take on them.


On the other hand, don't give up on your natural feet. Here's the website for the sport/lifestyle of “barefooting.” It includes a number of reviews of shoes that provide protection from the road/path surface, without the “control.”


© Jan TenBruggencate 2010

The flu in the first person

We've written at RaisingIslands.com about the H1N1 flu virus in a somewhat detached way, but now it's gotten personal.

I'm just off of what could have been- (by some symptom-reading systems—more on that later) the virus formerly known as Swine Flu.

If it is, let me just say, about that business about it being a “mild” flu? Harumph!

I felt like someone had tenderized me top to toe with a baseball bat, and overdoses of pain killers didn't do a lot of good.

I am old enough to be in that group that's statistically less likely to get it. That didn't help me.

Parenthetically, there is a level of weirdness about being infected by a bug that's a direct descendant of a bug that may have been inside a Mexican pig less than a year ago.

I've had a few flus and to be clear, this one stands out.

Actually, three things stood out.

One was pain. Body aches, headaches, skin aches, joint aches. Lot of aches, and Aleve barely made a dent.

Another was the sensation that someone on speed was messing with the temperature controls. There were fevers and chills, and chills during fevers, and sweats, and covers on and covers off, ad nauseum. That an pretty significant fatigue—didn't get out of the sack much for the first three days.

Finally there was, to put it as pleasantly as possible, significant intestinal distress.

There were not in my case—and I give thanks for this—significant nasal congestion, coughing or other upper respiratory issues. I had a mild dry cough. I had no appetite.

From what I read, and my doctor reported, you can't really tell which flu you have without a blood test, and in the middle of both flu season and the H1N1 event, there are so many people getting sick that they're not testing for it any more.

According to some sources, H1N1 has a reputation of sneaking up on you and hitting hard, although other flus will do that, too.

In my case, at 7 a.m., I was out on the ocean, paddling a canoe and feeling great. At 9 a.m. I was wondering who'd wrapped me in a blanket and pounded on me with lead pipes. It was rapid.

I managed to get in to see a doctor at the end of the day, with a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit and a fraction, and he prescribed Tamiflu, which I started taking immediately. It comes in 10-capsule packets, and you take one morning and one at night. For me, the five-day dose coincided with the worst of the symptoms.

They say Tamiflu will take a day or two off the symptoms. On day five I was feeling reasonably human, weak but okay. On day seven I was ready to go paddling in the ocean again.

During the process, I was very uncomfortable, but alert enough to read. For some reason television was far more annoying to me than normal, so I ploughed through books. My librarian wife brought me a tall stack of paperbacks, and I needed the whole stack. I was feeling ornery enough that I wouldn't put up with authors who cheated, digressed or got silly. Half the books, even by well-known authors, didn't make the cut. I gave them 20 or 30 pages, and if they started wasting my time, on to the next volume.

Saving all my patience, I suppose, for getting through the disease.

The pain lasted about three days. The severe fatigue four days, with moderate fatigue beyond that. The feverishness and/or sweats also four days. The intestinal stuff started about halfway in and then outlasted everything else.

Can I say for sure it's H1N1? No.

There's tons of credible information at the government flu site, www.flu.gov, and lots of interesting information elsewhere on the web—some of it credible and some less so.

Some resources say you can tell the difference by symptoms. Others disagree.

Some assert, for instance, that very rapid onset (bingo!) is a factor in H1N1, and that body aches and tiredness are more severe with H1N1 than seasonal flu. Most reputable sources, though, say you can't distinguish a particular case accurately by these or other symptoms, and that rapid onset isn't exclusive to H1N1.

Here's a site that argues they're pretty much the same, except that H1N1 has more respiratory/sore throat symptoms, which of course mine didn't. The federal government flu site notes that the respiratory issues only occur in a few of the cases.

The upshot, of course, is that even in laboratory-confirmed cases, the symptoms are different in different people. Because of courses, it's not just about the flu, it's also about you.

As for me, if a flu shot appears on my radar, I'm taking it. I may now be immune this particular strain of influenza, whatever it was, but I don't want to go through anything like this experience again anytime soon.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Sisyphean climate battles--Can we just move along?

A few letters to editors in recent weeks recalled for us Sisyphus, and long-ago battles that need continually to be refought.

Sisyphus, you'll recall, was the Greek mythical figure who shoved a giant boulder to the near the top of a hill each day, only to see if roll back down. For all eternity he was forced daily to push it back up.

The letters, all angry, assert that climate change is not happening, that it's a fraud.

From my perspective, that's a little like the guy who stands up to his knees in water, claiming it's not even a little wet.

Set aside the issue of human involvement in warming. If you choose to believe it's about cosmic radiation, about solar activity or some other natural cycle, fine. There is indeed a class of narrowly focused papers that suggest a role for such things--and even then, the authors mostly say it's a limited role. But most reputable scientists, and most nations, agree that human activity—like fossil fuel consumption and forest clearing—are the primary culprits.

Warming itself is well established. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that 95 percent of glaciers are melting. Plants in temperate zones around the world are blooming earlier in the spring. Animals are migrating earlier. Snow melt in California Sierras is occurring two weeks earlier over the past century.

It's even affecting our beer. The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, in the Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, reported recently on a decline in the quality of Saaz hops, a delicate variety used to make the finest pilsner beer. They blame rising temperatures.

A friend of mine who denies warming says he's a gauge-reader and mistrusts calculated evidence and computer models. Well, sea levels are measurably rising. Oceans are measurably warming. These are not theories. They don't rely on computer models or guesswork. These are things we can measure directly.

The conservative columnist George Will recently and loudly discovered that in February, there was as much ice in the Arctic Ocean as there was in February 20 years ago. What he either ignored or intentionally failed to report is that that ice was dramatically thinner than it was 20 years ago; or that in summer, there was far, far less ice than there was in summers 20 years ago. Less than at any time since we've been able to measure it.

Whether George Will is embarrassed or mule-headed or just plain doesn't care, I don't know. But to my knowledge, he has not fessed up that he mistook ice coverage for ice volume.

If we want some interesting observations, let's set aside both the journalists and the scientists. Who really knows what's going on up there in the icy north?

Business does. The oil companies, mining companies and the nations that border the Arctic know the ice is melting. They're actively arguing about access to the oil and minerals that are under where the ice used to be.

Captain Cook discovered Hawai'i for Europe while he was on his way to find the Northwest Passage. It was not there to be found in the 1770s. It was iced in, as it has been for most of the time since.

But in 2007, the Northwest Passage was clear for the first time in memory—and shipping companies are looking at it as an alternative to the clogged Panama Canal for getting from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Shipping companies are already taking advantage of the reduced ice cover over the northern side of Asia and Europe. This fall, two German cargo ships became the first commercial vessels ever to cross from east to west, NORTH of Russia, through the Arctic Ocean. These German ships, which were accompanied by an ice breaker just in case, were headed from South Korea to Rotterdam, in Holland.

China Daily columnist Liu Shinan decried the event, not because he doesn't believe it, but because shipping in the Arctic Ocean could threaten the health of Arctic ecosystems.


The point is that climate change is not something we need to worry about in the future. It's here, now. The folks at this maple syrup farm are worried. They're tapping their trees two weeks earlier each year than they did forty years ago. And it's affecting maple sugar production.

The prospect of no maple syrup on your hotcakes not enough to worry you? How about losing that glass of wine before dinner. Stanford researchers say warming weather has already increased temperatures in the West Coast wine growing regions by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit from 1948 to 2002, and that the continued warming will make many current wine areas unsuitable for commercial vineyards.


Now that's serious.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

Rare native forest bird holding its own; maybe recovering

The Maui Parrotbill, a critically endangered insect-eating forest bird, appears to be holding its own within The Nature Conservancy's actively managed Waikamoi Preserve in the forested uplands of East Maui.

(Image: Maui parrotbill. Source: The Nature Conservancy.)

Scientists are quick to caution that the information is limited to a two-week survey conducted in September of this year, but results suggest that the chunky yellowish bird's numbers are as strong or even stronger than in previous counts.

“The typical storyline with endangered forest birds is one of decline. To have an endangered bird maintain its population and perhaps even show signs of increasing is very encouraging and cause for celebration,” said Dr. Sam Gon, the Conservancy's senior scientist and cultural advisor.

It is a big deal in a world in which the primary direction of many Hawaiian native forest birds is toward extinction. The rarest of them, the po‘ouli, may be extinct. Its last two members have not been seen since 2004 (Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project).

“For populations of an endangered forest bird to remain somewhat stable for nearly 30 years is encouraging,” said the Conservancy’s Maui program director Mark White.

The rare bird survey was led by Dr. Dusti Becker, an ornithologist and project coordinator for the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project. Her team estimated that there are about 20 parrotbills per square kilometer of forest between Waikamoi Stream and the Ko‘olau Gap, on the windward slope of Haleakalā.

“I didn't expect that there would be that many birds there,” Becker said. A previous survey had placed the density at less than half that number.

The 5 to 6-inch long birds are olive green on top, yellowish beneath and have a distinctive yellow stripe over their eyes. Their name comes from their short, powerful beaks, which they use to pry open bark and twigs to reach insects and grubs. They are now found at elevations about a mile above sea level, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that only around 500 individual birds survive.

The birds, once more widespread on Maui and also on Moloka‘i, are now only found on Maui, and only within a range of 19 square miles on the high windward slopes of Haleakalā. More than a quarter of the known habitat for the parrotbills is within Waikamoi Preserve. Much of the rest is within the state's Hanawi Natural Area Reserve, where parrotbills occur at a density of about 40 per square kilometer.

The iconic crested honeycreeper, which is also endangered but is more numerous than the parrotbill, was also frequently seen during the bird population study at Waikamoi, Becker said.

In the survey, two-person teams walked numerous trails over a two-week period, stopping at regular intervals to watch for birds and listen for their calls within the 400-acre survey area. They saw or heard dozens of parrotbills, including at least three juveniles.

“We can say with confidence that Waikamoi hosts a breeding population,” White said.

The latest survey suggests a density double that of an earlier count, but the paper warned that the previous count was limited in scope, and may not have accurately represented the actual population. Still, it is possible that removal of pigs and improvement of the understory vegetation growth—which parrotbills use for feeding habitat—has increased population size at Waikamoi.

The Nature Conservancy has been actively managing the 5,230-acre Waikamoi Preserve since acquiring a permanent conservation easement to the property in 1983, from Haleakalā Ranch.

Since that time, the Conservancy has fenced out pigs, removed alien plants and increased native plants that forest birds and other species depend on. A recent vegetation survey in another portion of the preserve found a three-fold increase in native shrub cover over the past 15 years.

That's a good thing for parrotbills, for whom more native shrubs means more food. Their main feeding technique is prying insects and grubs out of dead branches and fruit and the bark of native shrubs and trees.

Becker said their preferred food sources appear to be grubs from the fruit of the native shrub kanawao, and insects and grubs from the dead branches of ‘ōhelo and ‘ākala. They also pull insects and grubs from the bark of ‘ōhi‘a and koa trees, lichen and any woody, rotting surface.

“At Waikamoi, my sense is that it's a growing population, fundamentally because of forest recovery,” Becker said.

If the population is growing, there is some hope of continued increase, since the recovery of the Waikamoi undergrowth is not complete. The forest understory is still more open than in the prime parrotbill habitat at Hanawi.

For more information:

The Nature Conservancy's Waikamoi Preserve: http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/hawaii/preserves/art2358.html

On the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project: www.mauiforestbirds.org

© The Nature Conservancy