Last time I posted, I made a list detailing some of the areas of my life in which I saw the biggest need for change.
The first thing I’m going to tackle is relatively easy as it doesn’t require an initial outlay – I’m going to time my showers. Normally, this is the part where I would try and calculate any financial saving that I was making so that I could add the money to my weekly shopping budget. As loose fruit/veg & bread etc. tend to cost more than packaged, I like to reallocate any money that I save to help cover the additional cost of making ethical choices, but on this occasion there isn’t going to be any financial saving because my water consumption isn’t metered. As with the rest of Scotland, our water is included in our council tax.
Still, Having read 12 Small Acts to Save Our World, I’ve become increasingly aware of the fact that all the water which comes into our home has been treated to be fit for purpose, which in turn means that it’s passed through a treatment plant. The more water I use (or indeed, waste) the more energy that’s required to treat it.
I suppose that on a remote level, I’ll be saving money because my water-heater won’t need to work for as long if I’m not heating as much water, but those sorts of sums are beyond me. So, for now, the food budget remains the same.
Anyway… The ‘control’ shower… by putting a plug in my bath, turning my shower on and starting a timer, I aimed to see just how much water I was using on average.
My shower took just under 7 minutes (I had to dry myself before I could grab my phone and camera to stop the clock and take a picture, hence the times not matching).
This is how much water was in the bath.
Please don’t judge the state of the tub/how cloudy the water is… or the shampoo bar residue to the right of the taps… I didn’t clean the place before taking this picture, which I probably should have thought to do, but there you go.
On some level, I did expect to see this sort of amount of water – it’s less than I’d use in a bath, which is what I’ve always been told is great about showers. But it’s also a lot more than I would like. It was around 10cm deep and that’s a lot. I mean, that’s more than I bathed my kids in when they were babies so that was a bit eye-opening.
This is my tub – still filthy – after a two minute shower. You can’t really tell from the photo but there’s less than half of the water of the previous shower in there (which makes sense, given that I was in there less than half as long…)
If you have the means to do this (i.e. a shower over a bath), I would definitely give it a go. It’s one thing to read about the amount of water you save, but to actually see it for youself really brings it home.
Having looked at the Do Nation Shower Power pledge, it looks like tackling my showers in this way can potentially save 11kg of CO2 in a two month period…
That’s 66kg over a year. If everyone in my family does the same, that’s 264kg CO2 per year (presuming they shower a similar length of time to me).
Have you tried any of the Do Nation pledges? Why not tell me about it here, or on Twitter?
Trail of Breadcrumbs 
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