You’ll be saving more and more water while washing your clothes and dishes as the next few years come along, all because of the recently enacted U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act. This legislation mandates increasingly stringent water efficiency standards for new dish and clothes washers for the first time, says the Alliance for Water Efficiency. This will produce savings in water consumption that will increase over the foreseeable future, measured nationally in millions of gallons per day.

Beginning with standard-sized and compact dishwashers manufactured after Jan. 1, 2010, and residential clothes washers manufactured after Jan. 1, 2011, these appliances must meet new minimum national water efficiency standards. That is, new machines made after 2009 will use less and less water per operating cycle to comply with the recent legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.

And stronger standards may be put in place by 2015 and 2018, respectively, the Alliance reports.

Efficiency standards for dishwashers are expressed in gallons of water used per load. Standards for clothes washers are expressed by what is known as the Water Factor (WF), defined as the gallons of water used per cycle divided by the capacity in cubic feet of the washer; the lower the WF, the more efficient the washer.

In addition to increasing the efficiency of water use, the new standards also mandate increases in energy efficiency. Criteria to be effective by 2011 are expected to save consumers $120 million annually in utility costs, saving 659 million kilowatt hours of electricity in addition to 11.2 billion gallons of water a year.