31 July 2009

treehugging tips: staying clean while being green

{photo via here}

simple and green tip 06: to shower or not to shower?

i love myself a good bubble bath, and have been known to take one at least a couple times a week. today it got me thinking though, which uses more water? shower or bath? according to the california energy commission, you might be better off staying clean with your shower stream. of course, that all depends on how long you stay in the shower, and how much water comes out of your shower head. the average bath requires between 30 and 50 gallons of water, while most shower fixtures installed before 1992 have a flow rate of about 5.5 gallons per minute....meaning, if your shower is always longer than 5 minutes, try and stick to the tub. 

better yet, cut your shower time down to 3-5 minutes and over time you will be saving 50% more water on average. if every american used just one less gallon of water per shower, the annual water savings would be more than finland's domestic water use for a year. that's a lot of water.

3 comments:

Morgan@LittleHouseofVeggies said...

Thanks for the tips! I love reading them. I have been thinking about this exact thing lately! Oh, and thanks for getting me off of the bottle (bottled water, that is)I have proudly not had a bottled water for a while now, and have fully converted to the refillable Brita jug container we keep in the fridge. Its awesome, cost efficient, tastes great! Thanks for the "green" inspiriation. Keep em' coming!

Jonathan said...

Those darn Finns!!!

rachel thurston said...

oh, great. I love my long showers. what if you have a really thick head of hair that takes forever to rinse!!! what if?! (love these tips! great blog feature).