“Another Triumph for the Greens,” Jonathan Last, Weekly Standard:
It so happens that in the last six months, a lot of people have suddenly discovered their dishwashers don’t work as well as they used to. The problem, though, isn’t the dishwashers. It’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, America’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink.
One of the key ingredients in dish detergent is (or was) phosphorus. Phosphorus is a sociable element, bonding easily and well with others. In detergent, it strips food and grease off dirty dishes and breaks down calcium-based stains. It also keeps the dirt suspended in water, so it can’t reattach to dishes. Best of all, it prevents the washed-away grime and minerals from gumming up the inner-workings of your dishwasher. Traditionally, phosphorus was loaded into dish detergent in the form of phosphates, which are compounds of phosphorus bonded to oxygen. (PO4 if you’re keeping score at home.) Prior to last July, most detergents were around 8 percent elemental phosphorus. Now they’re less than 0.5 percent phosphorus.
[…]
When Consumer Reports did laboratory testing on the new nil-phosphate detergents, they concluded that none of them “equaled the excellent (but now discontinued) product that topped our Ratings in August 2009.”
[…]
So why take out the phosphates in the first place? The environment, of course. When phosphorus gets into fresh water, it acts as a fertilizer for algae. When the bumper crop of algae later dies, its decomposition takes up oxygen in the water. And reduced levels of dissolved oxygen are harmful to fish.
But the industrial giants who manufacture dish detergent didn’t decide to reduce phosphate levels on their own. They were compelled. There’s nothing new about that. Governments routinely force both businesses and consumers to make trade-offs they wouldn’t otherwise make. For instance, by 2014, you’ll no longer be able to buy traditional, functional, cheap, incandescent light bulbs—because the government believes that compact-fluorescent light bulbs are better. What’s interesting about the case of the lousy dishwasher detergent is that the new formulas aren’t the result of a crushing federal mandate. Rather, the entire nation’s dish detergent supply was changed because two politicians in Spokane, Washington, wanted phosphates banned. And now the rest of America is living with the consequences.
[…]
Some government-imposed bans are easier to get around than others. For instance, if you want a toilet with a 3.5 gallon flush tank, as opposed to the American-mandated 1.6 gallon tank, you can drive to a Canadian hardware store on your next vacation, or find a friend in the hardware salvage business. The government says that you can’t have a showerhead with more than 2.5 gallons per minute of flow—but you can pull the shower head’s restrictor valve or, if you’re creative, put multiple shower heads on the same water line. And before the government outlaws incandescent bulbs in a few years you’ll be able to stock at least a 10-year supply without much effort or trouble. But good home dishwasher detergent is now banished from all of North America. Unless you’re willing to conduct home chemistry experiments that involve titrating certain industrial-grade cleansers into your dishwasher soap, the experience of high-efficiency, low-labor, automated, hassle-free dishwashing is something you’ll be able to reminisce about with your grandkids as you scrape the plates before putting them into machines that don’t quite work they way they used to.
The ratchet will keep turning. The anti-phosphorus lobby began by agitating against phosphates in laundry detergent. In the early 1990s they were banned, though an exception was made for dish detergents. Now phosphates are banned in dish detergents, too, though these bans make an exception for commercial dish detergents, which still contain phosphates. Surely they are next in line for improvement. And after that? Last January the Washington state legislature took up a proposal to ban phosphates from residential lawn fertilizers. It passed in the senate, but stalled in the house. The bill, which would have required neighbors to inform on one another, was sponsored by the Democratic majority leader, Lisa Brown. We probably have not have heard the last of it.
Spokane places a particularly high value on phosphorus reduction and, as Governor Gregoire observed, the ban might make sense there. But benefits never come without costs. Aside from the very real costs in time and aggravation imposed on millions of Americans who must adapt their dishwashing techniques even in parts of the country without a phosphate runoff problem, there are environmental costs to the ban. To people living in places where water is more scarce—say, Nevada or California—the ban might make less sense. Not that it matters anymore. We’re all living in Spokane now.
When it’s all tallied, Spokane County will have spent several hundred million dollars to remove about 150 pounds of phosphorus a day from the river. Sure, that money might have been spent on other public goods. But at least the voters there knew what the trade-offs were, and chose cleaner water and healthier fish over personal convenience. Or did they?
The ban itself, it turns out, has helped the river very little. A year after it went into effect, supporters conveniently forgot their promises of reductions in the 15 percent to 20 percent range and trumpeted news that phosphorus flowing into the city’s water-treatment plant had declined by 10.7 percent, to just 181 pounds per day. Buried in the accounts was a remark by the plant’s manager admitting that because the new phosphorus filtration system was so efficient, nearly all of the in-flowing phosphorus was getting filtered out anyway. So the reduction of phosphorus actually making it into the river as a result of the detergent ban is much, much smaller. Still, he chirped, “Any phosphorus reduction you can see there is going to have benefit to the river.”
That was the idea, anyway. Last month the University of Washington released a study suggesting that some of the phosphorus being discharged into the Spokane River never actually worked as fertilizer for algae to begin with. It seems that not all phosphorus is alike. Some of the effluents making their way into the river contained phosphorus in complex molecular forms which are not bioavailable. Algae lack the enzymes necessary to break down this phosphorus, meaning it is essentially harmless. The study was a useful reminder that all science is settled. Until it’s not.
For some of the people in Spokane this revelation may be welcome news. The Inland Empire Paper Company, for instance, which has spent millions fighting for its continued existence, contends that by the standards of bioavailability, only 9 percent of the phosphorus it releases helps algae grow. Perhaps the new study will spur the environmental bureaucracy to grant Inland Empire Paper a reprieve.
But for the rest of America, there’s no going back. So we might as well press forward and get to work. Those dishes aren’t going to clean themselves.
The road to dirty dishes is paved with good intentions dirty dishwater.
Which in turn is roiled up by leftist bureaucrats who are taking control of every last aspect of our lives.
Defund them.
Yes, I’m proud to say that Utah adopted the phosphate-free mandate, and my dishes come out of the washer with all manner of glick stuck to them.
Supposedly, you can go to Home Despot and buy phosphate in the plumbing department and add it back to the wash your own self, but I have yet to try it.
SCIENCE!
when phoshates are outlawed
only outlaws
have clean dishes
Jeff stole my p
stole it I say!
Hmm. Could go the adding phosphate route or could just look for a place to buy the “commercial” stuff, which probably works better yet anyway.
I have to wonder, and this more of a gut feeling based on what is ultimately my faith in American ingenuity, that someone will think of a way to accommodate these (admittedly ridiculous) bans on phosphates. In the short term it’s a pain in the ass, and frankly I don’t trust enviro-science (see Warming, Anthropogenic Global) so I’m not an advocating for this ban. Not at all.
What I’m saying is that there will be a chemical or mechanical solution to the problem. There are some pretty impressive low-flow toilets these days, after all, so I don’t think my optimism is entirely misguided.
And no, I don’t want to have to buy a new dishwasher because of this. I’m just saying the glass is damp on the inside.
link
impressive low-flow toilets
You mean the vacuum-assisted ones that ‘slode every now and again?
Say what you will about water wastage, but in my day if you wanted to blow up a toilet you had to flush a cherry-bomb down it. And we liked it!
Hadn’t heard the one about the exploding toilets. There’s a joke in there, trying half-heartedly to write itself but I’m not big on scatological humor – no shit.
scooter,
The effective low-volume* high-velocity models are rather expensive. About $500+ vs $200 for a standard type.
*not low-flow – that is what we had when the reduced the tank size on standard toilets, the ones you need to flush twice.
di,
What would that be, TSP? How much are you supposed to add? I would like to use as little phosphate as possible, since I’m on a septic tank.
Since the fucking EPA ruined dishwashing detergent, I’ve had to add Glass Magic (it prevents calcium buildup – by acidifying the water, I presume) and run the damn machine twice to get the dishes clean.
I need to be a little more clear on my terms, it seems – I assumed that any toilet meeting the current 1.6 gal/flush mandate was “low flow.” And let’s not turn this thread into a digression on plumbing technicalities; I can do my research separately.
I am constantly amazed at how the free market finds solutions for these invented problems. The amateur economist in me has to keep muttering “opportunity cost” under its breath, however.
Spiny Norman, I tried the TSP from Home Depot, but LemiShine from WalMart works better (it’s mostly citric acid). Spokane assholes probably own stock in LemiShine….
Also, I would like to point out – Chicken-in-a-Biskit crackers taste like fucking cardboard.
They use to be the most delicious crackers ever. Now, sans transfat, fucking cardboard dude.
“What would that be, TSP? How much are you supposed to add? ”
per@6 6% per article 8%
Since food manufacturers and distributors have knuckled under to the Feds, pretty much most all packaged food tastes like salted cardboard.
Ah, thanks newrouter. I managed to scroll past your link the first time.
stinkylegs,
Thanks, I’ll look for that, too.
You mean to tell me you CANT use the dog for pre-wash???
More about the LemiShine–I just add a heaping teaspoon in each detergent cup along with cheap Walmart detergent. I think it says to use more on the container.
What are those freaking things, I can’t remember what they are called… I think they are made out of styrofoam. They’re like puffy and made of rice or something. Rice cakes, maybe. They basically taste like styrofoam, which is I think what they are made out of.
I would advise you rather to build a recreational boat out of them. They are certainly buoyant. They should make adequate packing material for shipping, also.
That’s what we’ll all be eating, in due time. I’ll go fry squirrels. I’ll eat sparrows and pigeons. I ain’t eatin no styrofoam cakes.
As sustenance goes, I have always envisioned those things to be the perfect totalitarian foodstuff. Much more brutal and utilitiarian than cold borscht. The people in Zamyatin’s We or Orwell’s 1984 must surely have eaten nothing but plain rice cakes.
If there were any need to have a plate or utensils to eat those, the plate and utensils could simply be made of rice cakes as well. Then we would need no dishwasher detergent at all.
When I was trying to lose some personal blubber, I decided to eat rice cakes – a nifty combibnation of puffed rice and some sort of edible glue.
Then I saw the price and almost had a heart attack. I immediately returned to seltzer water.
This is a total digression on a dead thread, but when I was trying hard to shed a few – and successful, I might add – I had a hot-air popcorn popper. Popcorn – the old-fashioned kind – was cheap and when cooked with hot air had minimal calories. Convenience trumps all, I suppose, so the microwave wins (but really – all you had to do with the hot air popper was dump the corn in, turn it on, and wait so I’m not sure why those aren’t still around).