Day 26 of our Green Year: Limiting Our Showers

Wow, only a few days before we hit our first month of Our Green Year. Things are going well, we have our story in The Province (the largest paper in British Columbia) tomorrow, and we have been getting a lot of hits from Treehugger.com, so it is nice to be mentioned there as well.

Today, we decided to save some water, and the best way to do that is by limiting your showers. Typically, people will take a 10 to 15 min shower, and this wastes about 150 to 250 liters of water each time. Now, it is entirely feasible to have a shower, get yourself clean and wash your hair in five minutes, and when you do this you save 75 to 175 liters of water as a result. That may not seem like much, but here is a quick little lesson on water wasting:

• If you have a 20 min shower, you waste 300 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you waste 2,100 liters of water. Multiply that over one year, and you waste 100,800 liters of water!
• If you have a 10 min shower, you waste 150 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you have 1,050 liters of water. Multiply that over one year and you waste 50,400 liters of water.
• Now, if you have a five minute shower, then you use 75 liters of water. Multiply that over a week and you get 525 liters of water. Multiply that over one year and you will only use 25,200 liters. In fact, a five minute shower per day for a MONTH will use the same amount of water used in a 20 minute shower per day for a WEEK.
  

The water savings, which translate into money savings for you, amounts to 75,600 liters of water saved a year if you switch from a 20 minute shower to a five minute shower.
In our own house, we averaged 15 min showers, which came to 225 liters of water. Each day that meant we used 450 liters of water for the shower, which comes to 151,200 liters of water. Switching to five minute showers will save 145,800 liters of water each year here.

To ensure we follow this, we have bought an egg timer that will allow us to know when our five minutes is up.

Some more tips for saving water in the shower is to put a bucket in the shower with you. Let it fill up, then use that bucket to water your garden. Do not leave it in the shower if you are washing your hair or using soap.
You can also only shower a few times a week, like every second day. If you do that, you cut as much as 57 percent on your water.
Don't forget about showering together, that can save water too!