Understanding consumers’ behaviour for a more sustainable product design and reduced energy consumption in automatic dishwashing – an Australian household investigation and learning from a comparison with European ecodesign

Abstract Automatic dishwashing is an example of a complex socio-technical system with an interplay between a variety of factors and participants, including manufacturers, technology, regulators, consumer practices, cultural norms and infrastructure. Understanding this system is a prerequisite to find the right levers to optimise it. In this context, automatic dishwashing in Australia is studied by modelling the installed base of dishwashers in Australian households and recording the consumer usage of dishwashers in detail in a representative way. The information from both combined allows one to estimate the actual average use of resources (energy, water) and programme duration of dishwashers. Analysing the consumer behaviour opens the way to find optimisations of the consumer behaviour which would allow a saving of resources (more than 20 % on electrical energy) without deteriorating the performance and practical use of the dishwashers. Moreover, the comparison of the Australian socio-technical system around automatic dishwashers with the European system allows one to find a possible saving of another 20 % on energy caused by differences in the regulatory framework for those appliances.