In addition to making daily domestic life and the tasks that come with it easier, household appliances use half of the electricity consumed in homes. Considering that, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) from 2021, 98.9% of homes have a washing machine and 57.1% have a dishwasher, how these appliances are designed and manufactured, how efficient they are in their water and energy consumption, how they are used during their useful life and how much of them can be reused when it ends, can have an influence in areas as different as the energy transition, the circular economy or even the reduction of food waste.
Which household appliance can be used to make individual actions in each home more effective from an environmental perspective?
In my opinion, the dishwasher is definitely the best choice. Washing dishes by hand can use around 50 litres of water, and an Eco cycle on a dishwasher can use around 9. That means we are already saving 40 litres. In a country like Spain, which is short of water and where we recently had a water crisis, this saving is very necessary.
Anything else about the dishwasher?
Well, yes. In Spain, there is a lot of habit of rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, which means that the dishwasher washes dishes practically clean. This is completely unnecessary. Due to ignorance, a technology that is made available to consumers is being misused, precisely to reduce consumption throughout the useful life of the appliances. A lot of education and awareness is needed in this matter, because an appliance, when used well, saves water. It’s that simple.
Let’s now look at the washing machines
Washing machines are backed by a great deal of innovation and technology. For example, with auto-dosing, you pour a litre of detergent into the tank and the washing machine has sensors that measure how much laundry you have put in and how dirty it is, in order to dispense the exact amount of soap that the load needs. This avoids the common practice of filling the cap and, as there is a little more left, I just put it all in. This is 40% of unnecessary detergent, and 10 litres of extra water are used for a final rinse, which, with this auto-dosing, is avoided because it is not necessary.
And what about the refrigerators, which are in constant operation?
We have reached a point where improving them is very difficult, in terms of their energy consumption. And also in their manufacture: the origin of the stainless steel, which is now greener because it has been melted with green energy, vacuum panels have been removed and the thickness of the glass has been substantially reduced. They can be smarter: work is now being done, through digitalisation, to incorporate sensors that detect volatile compounds in food before the nose, to know in advance the degradation of food and not throw food away. In 2022, 630 million tons of food were thrown away, the production of which accounted for 8% of the global carbon footprint.
As a home appliance manufacturer, what are your goals?
We have three major challenges: to consume as little as possible during production; second, to produce appliances that consume as little as possible during the 10 or more years that they are in the user’s home; and to make them in such a way that at the end of their useful life as many parts of the appliance’s weight as possible can be used, and that the maximum number of elements can be recovered to return to the chain.
Do you also incorporate raw materials from recycling?
Yes, yes. We already have washing machines in which 40% is recycled material. And the goal is to increase this. Because the way they were made 30 years ago is nothing like the way they were made now. They may have lasted a long time, but they were made without taking into account consumption, the recyclability and interchangeability of the parts, the thickness of the sheets, which were also made with fossil fuels. Not anymore. Today, when designing, we think about how much to improve it, what parts to put in so that we have to recycle less in the future, what recycling materials are available, etc. And all of this within our quality standards. That, at BSH, is religion.
Since you mention duration, what can you do to make them last longer?
As with cars: maintenance. We are very clear that cars need to be maintained so that they last, but we don’t pay attention to the poor washing machine. Today, an appliance connected to the application receives notifications about whether the drum needs to be cleaned, a filter needs to be cleaned, etc. We accompany the user of more than… appliances of our brands in use in Spain so that they last longer.
Profile
Washing machines, refrigerators and everything else
Zaragoza native, with a degree in Law and an MBA, has been with BSH for 30 years, manufacturers of the Bosch, Siemens, Balay and Gaggenau brands, and one of the largest in the world. Since 2017 he has been its general manager in Spain, before which he chaired the company’s French subsidiary and was Sales Director, among other functions. Therefore, he knows the ins and outs of the sector inside out. Convinced of the need for consumer awareness, he strictly applies in his own home what he preaches outside: we must save water and energy, no matter what.