Here's why you shouldn't rinse dishes before putting in the dishwasher

Don't rinse food particles from dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. If you do, the detergent won't have anything to cling to and your dishes won't get as clean.

From Mental Floss:

One of the arguments against pre-rinsing is that certain detergents are designed to cling to food particles, as the Cascade detergent brand informed The Wall Street Journal in 2015. Without a surface to stick to, your dishes wont get as squeaky clean.

Consumer Reports offers another explanation. According to the product-testing magazine, newer dishwashersthose purchased within the last five years or sowont wash your dishes for very long if the sensors in the machine dont detect much dirt in the water. When that happens, the dishwasher gives them just a light wash, and items come out less than sparkling, Consumer Reports's Ed Perratore wrote in 2016. To avoid that lackluster result, dont rinse; just scrape off bits of loose food.

Theres also a major environmental factor to consider. One mind-blogging statistic from Consumer Reports states that the average person wastes 6000 gallons of water a year by pre-rinsing. Most dishwasher machines use just 3 to 5 gallons of water per load, while the average person uses about 27 gallons when washing dishes by hand, according to The National Resource Defense Council.

Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock Read the rest