Sierra Club Green Home

Washing dishes at the sink can be a Zen-like ritual–or at least a way to get your hands warm and your fingernails clean. But automatic dishwashers have their benefits, too, and not just for the busy and the lazy. Used wisely, modern automatics consume less water and energy than washing dishes by hand.
Today’s best energy-efficient dishwashers have soil sensors that automatically adjust power and water use based on how yucky your dishes are.

The business of greening your home can seem complicated at times. But with refrigerators and freezers it’s simple. These appliances are likely consuming 9% to 15% of your household energy, and the newest ones are models of efficiency. Don’t put up with an old energy hog.

Garbage disposals seem like the ultimate convenience–drop your banana peels, pizza crusts, and other leftovers down the drain, turn on the tap, flip a switch, and away they go. Problem is, when it comes to waste, whether it’s food or anything else, there is no away. Any “waste” that can’t be put back to use–either through reuse, recycling, or composting–becomes pollution that’s expensive to deal with and takes its toll on the environment.

Whether you want them to boil water or make a feast, most new ovens and cooktops (together called “ranges”) use about the same amount of energy. Gas ranges are a tad more efficient than electric ones, but not enough to make much of a difference in your utility bill. You may want to consider scrapping your old range because it has, say, an energy-hogging pilot light.

Trash compactors started turning up in American kitchens in the late 1960s. They use electricity to ram garbage into a compaction chamber, shrinking trash volume by as much as 80% and cutting down on the number of trips from the kitchen to the garbage can.

From a green perspective, though, there’s no compelling reason to buy a trash compactor. It will reduce the volume, but not the weight, of material that goes into your garbage can.

Vacuuming regularly is one of the simplest and most effective ways to keep your home healthier. That’s because household dust is a nasty mix of insect parts and feces, molds, hair and skin flakes from people and pets, and lots of other tiny particles you’d probably rather not think about.

Today’s high-efficiency clothes washers use half the gas or electricity of a standard washer. They also extract more water during the spinning cycle, which reduces drying time and energy. They offer oceanic water savings, too. Standard full-sized washing machines use 40 gallons of water per load, compared with only 18 to 25 gallons for machines that have earned the government’s Energy Star label.

Bread, bagels, and beyond

For toast fans, pop-up toasters are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Today’s models accommodate thicker bread slices and bagels, too.
If you want a more versatile appliance, you might be interested in a toaster oven. It can’t toast bread as quickly or sometimes as evenly as a pop-up toaster, but it can [...]

To zap or not to zap
More than 90 million American kitchens have a microwave oven. You don’t need one to eat healthfully or have a green kitchen. But a microwave can shave off some of your energy use, especially if you cook smaller meals or use the kitchen mostly to reheat takeout or warm frozen [...]