Forgot Password?
Home arrow GreeniacsArticles arrow Water arrow How To Conserve Water in the Bathroom
Written by Suzanne Heibel   
Share |
Friday, 24 October 2008

How To Conserve Water in the Bathroom

I will be the first one to admit it: I use a lot of water, in fact I use too much water. This does not make me a bad environmentalist, it just makes me someone who needs to tweak my behavior when it comes to water usage. You know those days when you want to just stand there and let the hot water run down your body? Everyone has done it, but as water becomes increasingly scarce we will all have to change this therapeutic but wasteful behavior.

Showers

The conventional shower uses 7-10 gallons per minute, meaning a fifteen minute shower could use up to 150 gallons per water. People living in less fortunate nations have to walk miles just to get a bucket of clean water (no this is not an old wives’ tale) and we feel okay about using 150 gallons for just fifteen minutes of our day? There is definitely something wrong about this usage distribution, but there are also some easy and effective ways to cut back:

1. Buy a single-pressure shower head. These are the same price as regular ones and they only shoot out 2-4 gallons of water per minute, saving you up to 80% of your shower water!

2. Ladies, shaving your legs does not mean that your entire body needs to be rinsed while doing so. Change the water so it flows out of the lower, tub faucet and turn down the water to a drizzle-like pressure while shaving. It not only saves tons of water, but it still allows you the convenience of rinsing off the razor. It also prevents the soap or shaving cream from being constantly flooded off your legs, which can get frustrating. And if you want to be extra environmentally helpful, cut down your shaving to 3 times a week instead of 5 or 6. Seriously, no one notices and if your boyfriend (or girlfriend) complains just tell him/her that it is for a good cause.

3. Soaping up is essential but having the shower on while doing so is not. It doesn’t really make sense: why would you leave on the water—whose sole role is to be a rinsing mechanism—while you are trying to lather up? Soaping up only takes a few minutes anyway, plus, doing so without water is also helpful visually in making sure you get that spot on your back that you always miss.

4. Take shorter showers. This is the most obvious yet useful way to conserve water. Why do showers need to last longer than ten minutes anyway? The only thing that really takes forever is shaving. Omit that from your daily routine and you are left with conditioning, which needs only three minutes maximum to run its course. An easy solution is to just adjust your shower timeline. Shampoo and condition first so you can lather while waiting for your conditioner to stimulate that body bounce. Cutting your shower down by just five minutes could save you anywhere from four to fifty gallons of water. This will not only help ease your environmental mind but your financial one as well.

5. Don’t brush your teeth in the shower. Honestly, how unnecessary is this? Sure it may feel foreign yet stimulating to feel your elbow, stomach, and gums all being cleansed simultaneously, but it is the most wasteful act of water usage possible. Just stop, seriously, it’s ridiculous. Once you switch to brushing your teeth at the sink, don’t forget to turn the water of while you are hitting each of those pearly whites!


Toilets

The most effective way to save water with your toilet is to invest in one that has duel-flush capabilities. The half-flush, full-flush means that water will be saved while still sending everything down. Unlike conventional toilets that use five to seven gallons per flush, these babies only use 1.5 to 3.5.1 For a large family or someone who drinks a lot of liquid it can save a tremendous amount of water.

The other question people always want to know is whether putting into practice the old saying: “if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down” is really okay health-wise. Bacteria are actually very common in urine and have the ability to multiply rapidly in free-standing pee at room temperature.2 Not flushing your toilet for long periods of time will breed bacteria and for sure cause it to smell. There is no clear-cut evidence for or against this rhyme, so it is up to you to decide how long to let the yellow stand.

Sinks

Sinks don’t use the most water but they are the most used water source in your bathroom. The EPA reports that bathroom faucets account for 15%3 of your household water and flows at a rate of 2 gallons of water per minute.4 Washing your hands, face, brushing your teeth and shaving are all daily activities that can be re-examined for water-saving techniques.

Washing your hands: The Center for Disease Control states that hand washing should last for twenty seconds, or as they say, two “Happy Birthday” songs.5 If you left the water on the whole time you would use two-thirds of a gallon of water every time you cleaned your hands. Instead, get your hands wet, turn off the water, enjoy some sud-wrestle hand time while singing happy birthday and then turn back on the water to rinse. This could cut your water use at least in half.

Shaving: Guys, if you are anything like my two-beards-a-day Italian boyfriend, I know your need for high-flowing, hot water to really clean out that razor. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Fill up a large cup of hot water, stick your hair-full razor in it and shake vigorously. Creating a high-pressure water flow between the blades is what cleans it so this can substitute your regular faucet-emitting jet stream. And keep in mind that hair floats so put your tool deeper in the water so it won’t be refilled instead of emptied.

Brushing your teeth: Do you notice I always save this subject for last? That’s because leaving the water on while brushing is pointless. Shaving legs or faces I can at least partially sympathize with, but leaving water running while not using it servers zero purpose. So retrain yourself and just turn it off.

Conclusion

Whether you are showering, shaving, or watching water run aimlessly as you brush your teeth, conservation of the precious resource we call water is possible. Changing habits is a long and arduous process, but once achieved it creates a better way of living.

Browse all Greeniacs Articles Browse all Greeniacs Guides        Browse all Greeniacs Articles
_______________________________________________________________________________

1http://www.wsscwater.com/service/WaterUsageChart.cfm.
2http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/URINE/URINE.html.
3http://www.epa.gov/watersense/pubs/ws_bathroom_faucets.htm.
4http://www.epa.gov/watersense/water/simple.htm.
5http://www.cdc.gov/cleanhands/.




Comments (2)
RSS comments
1. 06-12-2009 19:54
hi buddy! 
how are you? 
what is going on these days.iam very busy because i have started a new business of [url=http://www.infoaboutlighting.com/]lighting[/url] due to which i am no longer available now.
Registered
greeniac03143131
2. 10-12-2008 20:20
Good advice
javascript:ac_smilie(':grin') 
 
Yay, Suzie Q!
Registered

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Click here to Register.  Click here to login.
Last Updated ( Monday, 07 February 2011 )

SEARCH GREENIACS.COM

Green Facts

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.