Meanwhile, take a trip pretty much anywhere else in the world and things change:
Looking at an EU dishwasher label…The machine is rated not only on total energy and water consumption, but also on cleaning performance, drying performance, size and noise. At a glance, consumers get a sense of how this dishwasher stacks up against every other dishwasher on the market….The American EnergyGuide label lists the manufacturer-submitted annual kilowatt-hours consumption estimate, compares that to the other manufacturer-submitted estimates, then crunches those numbers with another set of assumptions to project how much money it might cost to operate the machine for a year. It’s up to the shopper standing on the dishwasher aisle to figure out whether 100 or 1000 kilowatt-hours per year is a reasonable cost for clean plates.
Basically, the rest of the world gets a free issue of Consumer Reports on the label of every appliance they’re about to buy. The Americans need a subscription. [Popular Mechanics]