Page 20 - Shaping A Sustainable Future

Conclusion

Our study has proven that dishwashing detergent can We communicated the experimental results to the
achieve effective degreasing and cleaning while using stakeholders and provided training on the new washing
less detergent and water at an optimal CMC value. Our method to the workers. We provided a graduated
new CMC value-based dishwashing method reduced measuring container to ensure that a correct amount of
water usage by 25 %, using only 15 litres of water instead detergent at the optimum CMC level was used to soak
of the typical 20 litres of water used in the coffee shop’s the dishes.
current dishwashing practice. It also reduced detergent
usage by 31 % per wash, as it used 125 ml compared to There are around 100 coffee shops in the Tampines
around 180 ml of detergent used in the coffee shop’s area. If more coffee shops are willing to use our CMC
current dishwashing practice. value-based dishwashing method for washing their
dishes, the positive impact will be substantial. According
Our new CMC value-based dishwashing method helped to our scale-up estimation, if the coffee shops in the
the SME use less detergent, conserve water, reduce Tampines area used the CMC value-based dishwashing
wastewater and helped them save money, hence method, they will be able to reduce detergent used by
creating a win-win situation for both SME and our 40,150 litres and water by 3,650,000 litres per annum,
environment. Refer to Figure 7 for the visual comparison hence reducing the CO emission to our environment
2
of both methods. significantly by 8,942 kg of CO per annum.
2
Our team is looking forward to assisting more coffee
shops and food courts in implementing the CMC value-
based dishwashing method as a future development
plan. Refer to Annex C for calculation.

Figure 7: Pictorial comparison of dishwashing methods.

18