I work in an elementary school cafeteria. We wash lots and lots of trays. My co-worker keeps putting our dirty rags in the commercial dishwasher to wash. I told her not to do that. It's not made for rags or cloth to be washed in and it will damage the dishwasher. I need more professional opinions, so I can either prove me wrong or her wrong.

Common sense would dictate that no, one does not use a dishwasher to wash cloth. Eventually the loose threads will clog up the dishwasher necessitating a costly repair.

I disagree. Dishwashers are made to handle quite a bit of debris. Commercial ones even more. Plus they use hotter water than home ones for a more sterile wash.

Ask your boss what is the proper policy of your workplace.

The NSF does equipment certification and specifies what a device is to be used for. Dish washers are for dishes, pots and pans, utensils and glassware-NON absorbent things. With rags, food particles get caught in the webbing. If the rag falls across the spray arm, it will not rotate. Local health inspector will write you up. However, your supervisor should be the person telling the other employee what to do.

It is certainly an unusual way of "washing" rags. Usually, washing is done by tumbling action inside a washer drum, including couple of water changes (rinsing: dirty water out, clean water in). Dishwasher doesn't not have such option. Also, no way to extract water from the rag after it went through the cycle. So dirty rag is basically just hanging inside dishwasher, in its own "dirt", and dishwasher just sprays hot water onto it. So I am not sure how clean you can get that rug by washing it in dishwasher. I am almost positive that if health inspector sees this, he will object to it.

Milo

I disagree. Dishwashers are made to handle quite a bit of debris. Commercial ones even more. Plus they use hotter water than home ones for a more sterile wash.

If the rags had been used to clean, say a floor, wipe up counter spills where meat drippings had been involved, I would not want them anywhere near a dishwasher. I have worked with both types of commercial dishwashers, one where the dishes etc are fed through slowly and I can see where they would get caught on moving parts and in a dishwasher in a restaurant kitchen, and no, rags would not work there either !