Save money by reducing both water and energy usage in the kitchen.
Follow these tips:
- Save water by scraping dishes instead of rinsing them before loading in the dishwasher. Rinsing dirty dishes before loading your dishwasher uses a lot of water and energy. Most dishwashers today can thoroughly clean dishes that have had food scraped, rather than rinsed off — the wash cycle and detergent take care of the rest.
- Only run the dishwasher when it is full (not overloaded) to make the most efficient use of your dishwasher’s energy and water consumption.
- Let dishes air dry instead of using your dishwasher’s heated dry setting.
- Check your water heater settings. Make sure your water heater is set at the lowest comfortable setting. If you’ve ever experienced scalding hot water, it’s possible it’s set too high and is wasting energy. If the tank is old, it’s probably an uninsulated unit, which can be easily remedied by covering it with an insulating jacket.
- Clean your refrigerator. It’s unlikely that you’ll purchase new energy efficient appliances for your rental, but you can tweak the ones you already have. For example, by cleaning the coils on the back of your fridge you’ll help one of the biggest energy hogging appliances run more efficiently.