Love that irony...

Paper or plastic? Disposable or cotton? Ceramic mug or Styrofoam cup? These questions and more plague our tryin' to be green everyday existence. Wired recently had an interesting article with some surprising answers. I scanned the page so you can read it here for your pleasure (click on the small image and a big one should show up).

The one about hand washing dishes really surprised me. Since I don't have a dishwasher, I have to admit I'm the guy who washes dishes with the water running. I had assumed I still did better than a dishwasher, but decided to do a test – I hand washed some dishes and plugged the sink to see how quickly it would fill up. To my surprise, I only got a quarter of the way through a set of dishes before the sink was full!

So I did another test and only ran the faucet when I rinsed and only a little shot to make whatever I was washing wet (or none at all if it was already wet). The result was less than half a sink full for the rest of the dishes. It was easy to get used to washing dishes that way, and I'm very glad to know that I'm wasting that much less water. Thanks Wired :)