In November last year, dishwasher manufacturer Bosch got its wrists slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for claims made in one of its adverts.

Running one of its fully-loaded dishwashers, it said, used less water than washing by hand. Or, to use the ad’s exact wording, ‘Did you know that washing up by hand uses up to three times more water than if you used a fully loaded Bosch dishwasher. You could be saving up to 75% of your water. That’s more than a shower every day …’

What it failed to make clear was that this was only true if ‘washing by hand’ involved leaving the tap running the whole time you were doing the washing up, and that the shower you were saving every day would have lasted only three minutes. Viewers complained and the ad was banned. The ASA’s full ruling (and reasoning) is here.

So we can safely assume that in most cases handwashing in the conventional way – that is, running a bowl of water, switching off the tap and then washing in the bowl – is more energy efficient than using a dishwasher. And we can be even more sure that washing by hand is also considerably cheaper.

Buying leading brand detergents, you can bag half a litre of Fairy Liquid for 95p at Sainsbury’s, or 30 Finish 5-in-1 dishwasher tablets for £6.78. That works out at 23p per wash, so for the price of a bottle of Fairy, which could last weeks and may last months, you get less than five full dishwasher loads. The picture on the right shows quite graphically what that means. Those five tablets cost £1.15. The bottle of Fairy, when bought, cost 99p.

Dishwashers are great timesavers, and the cost of running them is easily excused if it gives you an opportunity to spend more time with the family in these pressed, rushed days.

But they’re also a luxury, and on the road to self-sufficiency should be treated as such.

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