The other factor in this problem is that the substitutes for phosphates are not as strong as the original phosphates so they take up more room in a given amount of detergent, but the size of the detergent dispenser remains the same so it cannot hold the extra amount of the product needed to clean the load. With washing machines, it was not hard to add an increased amount of detergent to compensate for the weaker builders in the formula, but with a fixed size dispenser in a dishwasher, that is not possible. Of course, with the water usage cut to where they only give one rinse, they probably cannot adequately rinse away any additional dishwashing product. I wonder if they are putting larger dispensers in new machines. This whole effing mess was partly caused because municipalities would not spend the money to upgrade filtration plants to remove phosphates. They lobbied to ban them instead, starting with laundry detergents. The further outrage is that most phosphates and nitrates in our rivers and bays come from farm run-off which is a combination of fertilizer and animal waste. The corporate farming interests have powerful lobbyists in DC to keep any regulations off the backs of these gross polluters. That's in addition to all of the subsidies they rake in. So the miniscule amounts of phosphates that enter the water treatment stream from dishwashers and wind up in the rivers get banned as if that is going to solve anything.
