Hans said: "I would love! For the energy nuts to explain how 5 or 6 gallons of extra water is less economical than 1 1/2 extra hours of electricity!!"
Well, I'm not an energy nut ;-) but the explanation is that it takes a lot of energy to heat water. And not a lot of energy to run the pump motor. As a matter of fact, if you look up how much energy it takes to raise the temperature of a pound of something (water, metal(s), air etc), you'll find that water is at the top of the list of heat capacity -- it takes almost 4 times more energy to heat one pound of water one degree than it takes to heat one pound of glass. It takes even less energy to heat one pound of iron.
So, even if you kept the same pump and motor, if you use half the water, you basically use half the energy. If you keep in mind that newer machines specifically redesigned to use less water have a smaller water path and can use smaller/less powerful pumps to do the same job, it makes sense that the motor can run for an extra hour and half and still use less energy than the older 1/2 HP motors. If you then consider that if you are taking a longer time you may be able to do the same job with 120F water instead of 140/150F water, the energy requirements get even lower.
More is not necessarily better. You will remember not all impeller dishwashers cleaned better than KitchenAid dishwashers, despite the claims that the impellers used more water and created "walls of moving water" etc. Many people back then looked at KitchenAid machines with disdain, they did not believe that a "wimpy spray" would clean any better than a "wall of water". Same thing today, many people look at modern machines and think "that thing can't be better than my KitchenAid, which pumps a billion gallons per minute with a 1/2 HP pump". But remember, everything depends on a good design. Just like there were a few good impeller machines and a few good spray arm machines, there were plenty of machines that used more water and had more gallons/minute flowing etc that didn't do as good a job. While they may be rare, there are machines that clean really well and use way less water/energy than we are used to in America.
The other side of the coin is what happens if no one is volunteering to save energy and/or water. Where will all the resources come from? Should we locate all the power plants and water/sewage treatment plants in the middle of Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico etc, then route them to our homes (which would require kicking some people out of their properties through eminent domain to make space for the wires and ducts)? Or are people who are against conservation offering their back yards for the utilities to build their plants on so the rest of us can waste?
Here's what I'd like to hear people talk about: conservation does not imply a worse job and American companies are showing how inept and incompetent they can be -- there's plenty of stuff that comes from other countries that do the job with a fraction of the resources, but those countries have had a much higher population density than we do and much fewer resources, so they've been working on the problem for way longer. The staggering thing is that a lot of the companies in Europe and Asia are also the same companies here. We won't name names, but it's astounding that the same company that sells reasonably good stuff in Europe seems to be "incapable" of making something as good here. That goes for toilets, detergents, major appliances, cars, you name it. We are paying more for crappier stuff and instead of saying "hey, cut it out, I deserve better than this!" people are falling for the propaganda and complaining that they want to go back to the old days. So the companies can cut even more corners and sell you something with an even higher profit margin.
They could easily make the good stuff for another couple of bucks. But they don't -- they tell you folks to complain until Congress reverses the law.
You should not be complaining that stuff "doesn't use enough water/energy". That's totally irrelevant. You should be complaining that stuff doesn't clean well enough. It really doesn't matter what the implementation is if it works well and fast enough. I would never say "please make my dishwasher use more water so it can clean better and take less time". When I call to complain (and I do), what I say is "it takes too long and it doesn't clean well enough". It's their job to design something that works well with the constraints and resources that don't force my city to build yet another power plant, water and sewage treatment plants near my home, because that'll make the value of my home plummet.
If you think manufacturers have your best interest in mind, you are wrong. We are not the clients, we are the product, we are sold to the investors, the investors are the clients. I've used toilets that were 5 gallons/flush, 3.5 gallons/flush and 1.6 gallons/flush. Every single one of those had examples that worked most of the time and examples that kept clogging frequently because the toilets were not well designed. The only toilets I've used that I never needed the plunger for were the toilets in an apartment complex I used to live in: they were Toto's 1.6 gallons/flush (gravity, not power assisted). The only plunger in the apartment (we had 3 toilets) stayed in the corner gathering dust, we never used it in 2.5 years, and people commented on the dust. I never cleaned it, it was proof for all the nay sayers that we never used it. Why can that toiled work and the other ones clog? Because Toto didn't just reset the new tanks to use 1.6 gallons/flush, they redesigned the entire thing to actually work. The other companies just told us that "that's an impossible goal, so we won't even try it, we'll just pretend we tried -- go complain to your representatives to repeal the law". That's dumb.
What made America great was that we used to be the country to emulate, where people got bleeding edge technology from. Now we're a country of lazy asses and people who believe propaganda from the manufacturers so the investor can have an extra cent at the end of the quarter, we're not only not exporting technology anymore, we need to import high tech stuff from other countries.
Truth is, there are machines that clean really well and finish a cycle in one hour or less, made in Europe, using a fraction of the energy/water as the "energy star" machines made here that take over 2 hours and don't clean as well. It's high time we stop bitching about high-efficiency appliances already and start calling our representatives and manufacturers and demanding that they start making stuff as good as the stuff we've been importing into US. It's not the low energy/low water consumption that is the problem, it's the manufacturers that can't be bothered to make something good.
If the population keeps growing and the resources keep shrinking at the rate we've been seeing, before you know it they'll be actually coming to our homes and prying our older collectible things (read, "not high efficiency") away and forcing us to buy the crap the manufacturers can only hope we'll be forced to buy.
The much better alternative is to force the manufactures to improve their products, so people buying new will automatically save enough resources that we'll be left alone in peace and quiet with our collections.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
