It’s now possible to rank dishwashers, washer driers and washing machines by water usage as well as energy usage thanks to Sust-it. With nearly 40 per cent of homes now having a water meter, saving money by saving water is an important issue.
We’ve taken OFWAT’s average price for a cubic metre of water, and fed this into our calculations to give an overall running cost. For dishwashers there is very little difference in water consumption between models, they use on average 10 litres per wash, or cost about £3 per year. The real baddies are the washer dryers, some can use over 130 litres per wash – double the water consumption of a washing machine and can cost as much as £45 per year.