Reports analyze dish-washing habits in China

Three reports concerning the dish-washing habits and hygiene conditions of Chinese kitchens were released in Beijing on Tuesday.

Researchers from the All-China Environment Federation, the Bonn University, the Beijing University of Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, are among the producers of the reports, which started in April 2012 and featured residential kitchens in Beijing and Shanghai.

A report about water consumption in Chinese residents' kitchens showed that 70 percent of families in Beijing and Shanghai used running water to wash their dishes, the method that consumes the most water.

Beijing residents' daily average water consumption for washing dishes is 37.4 liters, while Shanghai residents use even more water for this chore, about 70.8 liters. The figure for Swedish residents is about 3 liters a day, and roughly 7 liters a day for Germans, who widely use automatic dishwashers.

A second report compared the time spent washing 74 dishes by hand and by a dishwasher. To reach the same standard of cleanliness, hand-washing took more than an hour, while the dishwasher took only five minutes.

Investing more energy and time does not guarantee a better result. A report about the hygiene conditions in residential kitchens in Beijing and Shanghai showed that the total bacterial count on hand-washed dishes registered 100,000, compared with the below 10 on dishes cleaned in dishwashers.

"Possible reasons include the insufficient rinsing process and the habits of wiping dishes with a piece of cloth after hand-washing," said Shen Jin, a staff member from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Xie Yuhong, deputy secretary-general of the All-China Environment Federation, said as a popular kitchen appliance in Europe, dishwashers has five unique functions that outweigh traditional hand-washing and may attract Chinese consumers: they save energy, water and time, can sanitize dishes and can be used for storage.

"But they have to cater more to the Chinese market before Chinese housewives accept them," Xie said.

That is exactly what the European dishwasher manufacturers are planning.

"We have come up with several different Chinese characteristics compared with those of European residents that may affect their ways of washing dishes, such as family size, kitchen dimension and cooking and eating behaviors," said Raimund Denk, senior vice-president of BSH Home Appliances (China) Co, a major dishwasher producer in Europe.

Denk said the company is analyzing its data to make its products more suited to the Chinese market.

In about seven to 10 years, the Chinese market for dishwashers may grow from the current annual sales volume of 100,000 to more than 1 million, said Aditya Sehgal, regional director for North Asia at Reckitt Benckiser Household Products (China) Co, which owns several health and hygiene brands, including dish-washing detergents.