Paper Plates or Reusable Plates?

Question

What's more eco-friendly to use daily-paper plates or reusable plastic/glass plates?

Either buy more paper plates or use more water running the dishwasher....?

Thanks =]

Answer 1

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By using my own dishes, I keep down the amount of waste from our home.  But, I use both.  I use bamboo plates with paper plates for the kids snacks, sandwiches or if we eat on the porch,  The liners I rinse off, paper I throw away.

As to the waste of water in a dishwasher: consider this: washing dishes by hand under running water uses fifteen to twenty gallons of water, in our house hold.  So, instead, I keep a cheap veggie brush and a small container of soapy water, and the kids scrub their plates off before they go into the dish washer.  I have the Eco brand, that has multiple stages.  I do not use the heavy or pot wash.  Just the Eco wash, and I air dry them rather than use the heat.  My dishwasher uses 10 gallons, less than hand washing.

Wanting to save water we did this:  installed a 'hold' handle in the shower, we get wet, put the water on hold, soap up, and turn the water back on; saving five to ten gallons three times a day.  We also put clay bricks in our toilets.  It displaces the water and saves two gallons every flush.  Not to mention, the old, "If it is yellow, let it mellow, if it is brown send it down" rule.

Answer 2

i think paper plates are better..especially if you recycle them after using them..but glass plates are good if you wash them in the washing machine..and that is because when you are washing things in the sink you consume 6 times more water than what you would have consumed if you had washed them with the machine.....

Answer 3

If your dishwasher is completely loaded before you run it then you actually use less water than doing it by hand.... I would never use paper or foam plates.

Answer 4

wash the "real" plates  by hand and don't let the water just run fill a dish pan or make sure your dishwasher is FULL and run it at night when demand is lower...also use cloth napkins vs paper ones ...saves land fill space

Answer 5

glass reusable plates are better as long as you're running a full load on the dishwasher instead of having only 1 or 2 things in it at a time.

Answer 6

If you go for recycled and bio-degradable plates then that might sway the argument in the direction of paper if the alternative involves a dishwasher... although you could always do the washing up by hand, using Ecover or similar biodegradable detergent which would probably be the most eco-friendly solution of all!

Answer 7

wow that's tough

see factories us energy they kill plants the pollute and many other things but water after u use it it gets cleaned and then someone else drinks it

fact- we drink the same water as dinosaurs

Answer 8

paper plates pretty much suck when you need a real plate.    you'd end up needing to double up or buy expensive thick ones.  i have corningware plates that are 25 years old and still work fine.

we can get the water back, but we can't take back either the landfill space nor the money spent on garbage.

Answer 9

It is all up to you, whether you want to fill up our landfills with plates which in turn contaminate our drinking water, or you could wash your dishes and you use the water, but you don't contaminate it.  We can purify the water that you use for dishes, but we can't stop Landfills from contaminating the water.  You could use biodegradable plates, but then again they can be expensive.

I would go with washing your dishes.

Answer 10

reusable