Next time you take a shower, try it without the water.
I love taking long showers. Standing under the streaming water is my favorite form of meditation. I usually come up with solutions to work problems, like how to start a story that’s on deadline.
Correction: I used to love taking long showers. Some years ago, I started feeling guilty about the huge amount of water going down the drain. So I cut myself off; as soon as I was clean, the water stopped. Then I started feeling guilty that for much of my cleaning time, water was still being wasted.
Somewhere around that time, I went to Indonesia and East Timor and experienced their bathing system, the mandi.
A mandi is both the bathroom and the bath. Generally, it’s a tiled room with a large sink full of water, a plastic scoop, and a drain in the middle of the floor. (The toilet is also in there.) Taking a mandi involves using the scoop to take water out of the sink and pour it over yourself. The water runs onto the floor and down the drain. It takes a few scoops of water to get wet. Then all the soaping and lathering happens, and another few scoops rinses everything off. For the most part, the mandi water is cold, so it really puts the kibosh on the whole lingering thing. But on a hot day in Southeast Asia, nothing feels more refreshing.
So I got back home and realized I don’t need all that water rushing by while I’m washing my face, or shaving my legs, or pumicing, loofahing, conditioning – you get the idea. So nowadays, I turn on the water, get in, get wet, and turn it off. Then I get to work lathering up, shaving down, scrubbing my face with assorted (organic) treatments, the whole megillah. The water comes back on to rinse off.
If I have to wash my hair, the water stays on, but it’s off for the conditioning stage. And I’ve started washing my hair less often, because it takes so much time and energy. (Bonus result: my hair doesn’t get as dry when it’s washed less often, so it requires less conditioning. Inadvertent savings!) The whole process probably saves about ten gallons per shower and saves my conscience twenty gallons of guilt.
You could also go without shaving at all. Waxing, for women, saves the shaving ritual, as does going au natural. And thus eco-friendliness does make either Barbies or hippies of us all.
Some showerheads have an easy on/off switch to make the whole water adjustment easier. I started doing this in the summer, and it was a breeze. In the winter, even one as mild as we have in Los Angeles, it’s not as fun. But it’s such a small thing to do, for such a big return, that I’ve gotten hooked. And about once a month or so, I even go full mandi – hauling a bucket in and making a whole shower out of it. Try it, it’s pretty fun. And hey, you even have the luxury of hot water.
But not too hot. Turning down the water heater thermostat to 115-120 saves energy and helps avoid scalding, which is always welcome. And cooling the shower down is also better for your body; hot water dries your skin out, requiring a greater use of rehydrating products. And if you can skip a shower once a while, on a day you’ve been particularly inert, go for it.
Oh and speaking of that bucket, you may want to leave it in there. If, like me, you have an ancient plumbing system, it takes a looooong time for the hot water to get through the line to the shower. In that time, I collect water in a bucket that I then store in my (separate) bathtub. I water my plants with it.
Even if all of this is just a summertime exercise, a few months (or even a few more weeks) of reducing usage will go a long way to saving water, and energy, for those winter months to come. Not to mention all the saved guilt.
Some Stats:
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, turning down the temperature on the water heater 10 degrees reduces energy costs 5-10%.
If you don’t yet have a low-flow showerhead, give it a shot. The savings are considerable: non-conserving showerheads use 5-8 gallons per minute, while their low flowing cousins use 2.5 or less.
