Green Showers

Manky's showers are green.

I should save water. Showers waste a lot of water, right? (Actually showers use less water than baths, because the average bathtub takes like 70 gallons to fill, so unless your shower is over 28 min long (with a modern showerhead) or 14min long (with an old-fashioned shower head, uses more water) it's better to use the shower.)

I am not in control of my showerhead because I live in a dorm. So what I can do is keep my showers short. Save the planet! I timed my showers. I take an 8 minute shower when I just wash my hair, and a 12 minute shower when I condition my hair and shave my legs. Then I timed my Green Showers. For a green shower I turned off the water when I didn't really need it running. Like while the conditioner sits in my hair, I scrub with a loofah, and I shave my legs - I usually leave the water running for that 'cause hey, I'm in the shower, and it took me five minutes to get the water temperature mixed nicely. Why mess with that? Well for my Green Showers I turned it off. I brought a plastic pitcher in with me and filled it with warm water for my loofah and razor and just scrubbed away with the water turned off.

Turning off the water saved four minutes of water running, but since half the time I just wash my hair and call it a day, it averages out to 2 minutes per day. With an old showerhead that would be 10 gallons of water and with a new showerhead that would be 5 gallons of water. That is a lot of trouble to save 5 gallons of water per day. Kindof depressing.

My showering every day uses about 180 gallons of water per week. Turning off the water on the days when I was going to condition my hair etc. would save 40 gallons. So green showers would use 140 gallons a week.

I looked for another way to save water in my showers. If I'm not going to the gym or otherwise working out, I wouldn't really have to shower every day. Let's face it, I'm not an Olympic Athlete. I'm not like those guys in the Gatorade commercials that are raining perspiration all the time. If I'm just sitting in class all day, deodorant and a clean shirt would pretty much cover it. At least from September to April. If I showered every other day, like only on gym days, I would use 105 gallons of water a week, and turning it off while I scrubbed would save 35 gallons a week. Using 70 gallons (green) vs. 180 gallons (normal) is a big difference. I could reduce by more than half!

To Do List

• Shower every other day / Go to the gym every other day and only shower on gym days.
• Put a plastic water pitcher on the shower floor, so it can fill with warm water when the shower is turned on, so I can use it to wet loofah / rinse razor when the water is turned off.
  
• Shampoo hair, rinse hair, apply conditioner, then turn the water off, scrub with loofah, apply shaving gel, shave legs, turn water on, rinse.
• Save 110 gallons of water every week.

Success: I don't really mind turning off the water. It's easier to re-mix than I thought it would be, maybe because the hot water is already running. I feel cleaner in the end because I'm not rushing because the water is running, so the conditioner can sit for five whole minutes and I can shave twice as nice. And I can totally shower every other day. My hair stays clean (I'm just lucky I guess) and I don't smell bad if I just sit in class all day. I can't skip every other day during the summer, though. And Brian could never do it. Maybe it's a guy-chemistry thing. During the summer I'll shower every day but turn off the water while conditioning, saving about 40 gallons per week. And for the other 8 months of the year I can save 110 gallons of water per week. That's almost 4,000 gallons during the next school year! (Turning off the water when conditioning my hair, but still showering every day, would save 1,290 gallons of water during the next school year.) I'm going to call Manky's Green Showers a success and move my green thumb on to the next area.