What's very common in the Netherlands is simply to have a medium-sized plastic bowl which can take up a little over half your sink. (It can be square and bucket

What's very common in the Netherlands is simply to have a medium-sized plastic bowl which can take up a little over half your sink. (It can be square and bucket-ish but it should not be inconveniently large.) The idea is that you let a thin stream of hot water come out of the tap; glasses and other aesthetic things get rinsed first, aiming the dirty water that runs off of them down the drain. This is why the wash-bowl does not fill up the whole sink. Once those are done the extra water is still clean and clear in the wash-bowl, so you can add some soap and do the plates and other greasy dishes: just let the dirty water fall out into the drain. This solves the "cleaning with dirty water" problem; you never soak the dishes in the water, so they never have to contaminate it. Another water-saving measure I've seen is simply not to rinse soapy-water dishes but to let them briefly drip-dry and then dry them with a dishcloth: this gets the soap off without using extra water. I mean, it's a first-world country and they've got lots of water to spare but I'm glad to see that the Dutch "no inefficiencies" demeanor means that they make an effort anyway.