Envirofascism Leaves Dirty Dishes

15 Dec, 2010 by Dave Blount

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Everything is grubby in countries run by statist moonbats — even dishes fresh out of the dishwasher.

A couple of months ago, Sandra Young from Vernon, Fla., started to notice that something was seriously amiss with her dishes.

“The pots and pans were gray, the aluminum was starting to turn black, the glasses had fingerprints and lip prints still on them, and they were starting to get this powdery look to them,” Vernon says. “I’m like, oh, my goodness, my dishwasher must be dying, I better get a new dishwasher.”

But others are having the same problem all across the country. Dishwashers aren’t to blame. As with virtually all problems large and small, it’s the fault of Big Government.

Seventeen states have banned phosphates from dishwashing detergent, on the theory that they encourage algae to grow. So manufacturers took out the ingredient that made the detergent effective.

Susan Baba from Procter and Gamble says the company had no choice. It just wasn’t feasible to make detergent with phosphates for some states and without them for others.

“You know, this isn’t really a huge environmental win,” she says.

That’s because phosphates are wonder ingredients. They not only strip food and grease from dishes but also prevent crud from getting reattached during the wash. So she says without phosphates, people have to wash or rinse their dishes before they put them in the dishwasher, which wastes water. Or they run their dishwasher twice, which wastes electricity.

But the point of environmental regulations isn’t to make life more pleasant for polar bears and delta smelt. It’s to make it less pleasant for us by tightening the noose of ubiquitous, all-powerful government around our necks.

Meanwhile, Sandra Young is buying trisodium phosphate at the hardware store and mixing her own detergent — until our rulers get around to forbidding it.

On a tip from JWWright. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.