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This is really getting ridiculous. By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth and while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the wat

This is really getting ridiculous. By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth and while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. So yes, warm water consumption might be a thing in ever denser megacities, but please stop to greenshame every single habit of an industrial society and simply reconsider the typical source of energy. For small houses, solar thermic or photovoltaic collectors should do just fine, for bigger ones, consider distributed heat networks or small scale combined powerplants. And should you live in an area, where water is indeed a scarce resource, make a distinction between greywater and wastewater.

CapitalistCartr 7y ago
The author makes clear it saves water and energy without sacrificing comfort: "Jonas writes about his shower that 'it is not all a compromise in comfort, as it is sometimes suggested in the research papers of the 1970s' and I totally agree." So substantially more efficient with no loss of living standard. As for energy: " . . . while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources." All energy can be obtained from carbon-neutral sources, but as it's fungible, all savings are beneficial. Conservation is the lowest hanging fruit. I think your greenshaming diatribe is more personal.
- cowmoo728 7y ago
  I think it's a reaction to people constantly saying "take shorter showers!" when doing that would have minimal effect on climate change. Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    > Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis. Maybe, but people minimize the impact of day-to-day living. Which do you think is higher: US carbon emissions from passenger vehicles, or US carbon emissions from freight trucks, ships, trains and airplanes combined? In fact, it is passenger vehicles. Does your modern city dweller drive to work every day instead of taking transit? Individual choices really do have a real impact, it's not all due to industry and agriculture. Don't minimize the impact of individual choices. Source, US EPA: "The Transportation sector includes the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes, and other vehicles. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum-based products, like gasoline, in internal combustion engines. The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector come from other modes of transportation, including freight trucks, commercial aircraft, ships, boats, and trains, as well as pipelines and lubricants." https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
    - wffurr 7y ago
      What's the point of comparing vehicle emissions to the energy cost of hot showers? In fact, reducing access to long hot showers might increase vehicle emissions as fewer people would be inclined to bicycle, especially in hot weather.
      - coldpie 7y ago
        I'm not. The person I'm replying to said, "industrial and agricultural ... pollution [is] massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis." Many people use this premise as an excuse to avoid making changes in their own lives. However, my point is that it is a false premise. Industrial pollution is actually not massive compared to individual pollution.
  - ProZsolt 7y ago
    Same with plastic. You can shame people who not recycle everything but till companies start reducing plastic packaging nothing will change.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Protip: more things can be done at the same time, than just 1. The best reading, this is a case what we would call "whataboutism". Do note, packaging companies and excessive use of single-use plastics is horrible and absolutely should get fixed. But one can also make local changes about your life that also reduce your impact. Well, if you care.
      - salawat 7y ago
        >The best reading, this is a case what we would call "whataboutism". Do note, packaging companies and excessive use of single-use plastics is horrible and absolutely should get fixed. Not sure I necessarily buy that. Easiest fix in many cases with the lowest impact in terms of lives to directly change should be happening higher in the industrial chain to start with. There is little or no point to trying to change things in the immediacy of the end consumer until the upchain effects of getting industry in check have settled out, as the situation then may have completely changed from the current day to day consumer reality. >Protip: more things can be done at the same time, than just 1. Yes, things can be done in parallel. No, there is a certain point where if you start pushing the pain on the consumer first without reining in industry, you'll end up with the better environmental cost delta amplifiers (industry) creating more problems for the consumer to have to fix/compensate for. Example: People want alternate ways to heat water, therefore tanks/plumbing systems supplies capable of making solar based heating become more popular. The parts to make that consumer change possible though rely on an industrial process that ends up outputting more carbon than people save through the solar water heating system. What you want is: Figure out ways that industry isn't mitigating carbon debt in satisfying current demand. Tweak those to rein things in and figure out how the consequences propagate out and how it impacts consumer behavior. Then rinse and repeat. Remember, if you create a hole through consumer behavior changes alone, all it does is signal capital into the most expedient form for utilizing current technology to try to create new demand from the change of the economic landscape. If your current technology was part of the problem your consumer behavior change was meant to remedy, you just ticked off a bunch of people when the actual figures come out saying you didn't realize the payoff, and you further hurt your credibility in suggesting additional changes. Once you have everyone playing to the same tune industrially, the societal approach to conservation and what can or can't be done fundamentally changes. I hope that makes sense.
- t34543 7y ago
  I think you sacrifice a lot of comfort with a mist shower. I enjoy high GPM showers - because it feels really good and it’s one of my favorite things every morning. hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off, I imagine it would be even harder in a misting system.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    I imagine that all the little mist ports would almost immediately clog with lime scale, and the shower would quickly be reduced to utter uselessness.
    - Klathmon 7y ago
      If they're anything like the misting irrigation systems, they never clog even if they are literally covered in dirt and mud for most of their life.
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Covered is fine, because the water pressure can clear out the path. The problem is stuff inside the pipes.
        Klathmon 7y ago
        the ones at a place I worked used reclaimed water. I don't know how well filtered or treated it was, but I know that it would leave horrible water spots all over anyone who parked too close to them.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    >hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off Isn't it the opposite (i.e. soft water is the problematic one)?
    - t34543 7y ago
      Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I was mistaken.
- tlarkworthy 7y ago
  I am with the OP, I think a lot of suggestions come from people with no quantitate intuition. Switching shower tech will not move the needle in any useful way. In fact, think it will be harmful in some ways as it further acclimates a sloppy non-quantitate approach to resource efficiency.
- scythe 7y ago
  I used mist showerheads in the freshman dorms at Georgia Tech. In my experience, it absolutely was a huge sacrifice of comfort. I was always excited to take a real shower every time I went home for vacation.
Klathmon 7y ago
The article does put some numbers to the energy needed to heat the water. They estimate it at being equal to driving 3.5 – 7 km with a relatively fuel efficient car per shower. They also say they didn't count the energy costs from water treatment and distribution. And they also point out that all of the current wind turbines in the world could only power 1 billion people's daily shower, only considering the heating of the water... If there's a way to reduce the cost of showering without any significant decrease in quality of life, why not encourage it?
mikepurvis 7y ago
I agree. A low-flow toilet still takes ~5 litres to flush; definitely the obvious thing to do is capture the used shower/sink water into a reservoir that then is used to flush the toilet throughout the day. If the reservoir is inside, then even the energy used to heat the water is not lost, as it will warm the house while the tank cools down. But whenever I've looked into greywater capture systems, they seem mostly focused on an outdoor storage drum with rain-barrel type applications in mind (garden irrigation, etc). I mean, the other option is just not to have a shower every single day. I know the thought is horrifying to some, but a fully-grown adult can be perfectly presentable on 2-3 showers a week.
- throwaway123x2 7y ago
  I start stinking after ~18 hours no matter what deodorant I use.
  - shantly 7y ago
    I need a couple showers a day or my bedding would start to collect oils & such so much that it starts causing skin issues when I sleep in it. I mean it does anyway but slowly enough that I can go a reasonable amount of time between washing it. A lot of my saved water and energy from showers would just go to washing all my bedding every day or two. [EDIT] of course I could clean off some other way, too, but dropping to only bathing in any serious fashion less than once a day is not something I'm much interested in trying, for this reason if no other.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    Review your dietary habits (certain foods will make you stink much more, probably booze as well if I had to guess) and switch to an antiperspirant brand like Certain Dri
  - Filligree 7y ago
    Do you use soap, on anything but your hands? That seems to be a prime cause of smelliness, and it's entirely unnecessary.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Water isn't really scarce but it is over-extracted and as per typical in this overly individualist society, that gets thrown back on the individual to make tokenistic gestures of self sacrifice by buying more stuff. The correct solution to over-extraction is political policies that put the health of the whole environment, including surface and ground water, above the selfishness of industry.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
I think people aren't as aware of how power intensive showers are as maybe they should be. It takes roughly 10kw to provide a decent instant hot water shower. That's roughly the output of 40 domestic solar panels at 100% capacity. Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Taken another way it's the same amount of energy as it required to propel a scooter or small motorcycle along at 50mph. How many people start their showers several minutes before the are actually ready to step into them?
- icebraining 7y ago
  > Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Or you could just slowly heat water in a well insulated tank. And if you paint your tank black and put it in the sun, you may even be able to skip the PV panels :)
- Filligree 7y ago
  Is it common where you're from to use 10kW water heaters for a shower? We've got that at our cottage (gas-based, not electrical), but that's mainly because there's no grid connection. Everywhere else I've been, people just use tanks. It might take a few hours to heat up from nothing, but even a mid-sized tank can easily do 2-3 showers.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    At a wild guess I'd say 50% of UK homes would have at least one instant hot water electric shower. The other option being a power shower driven from the hot water loop on their gas central heating.
- howard941 7y ago
  You can heat water with DC and no inverter. Finding a DC water heater that's safe and inexpensive and voltage swing-tolerant might be a challenge.
oddeyed 7y ago
You've approached this as if you're concerned that someone will take away your shower. You could also view this article as saying "hey, look at this low-cost and low-resource-intensity way to make luxurious daily showers accessible to more people!" There's a huge number of people around the world who want better lives, the true challenge of the environmental crisis is how that can be delivered without trashing nature (and maybe inadvertently destroying our own civilisation).
- benologist 7y ago
  If you get enough drought daily showers may indeed be threatened - about ten years ago my city took drastic steps to reduce the time spent in showers by distributing 4 minute timers to use as part of a larger effort to reduce residential water consumption. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-conserve-brisbane24-2009nov24-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-co...
justinph 7y ago
Water is more scarce than you think. We're depleting groundwater faster than it is being replenished in a _vast_ swath of the country. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/06/mapping-strain-our-water/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/0... Even in regions where surface water is plentiful, making water fit for human use is a _significant_ user of energy. Even if it was cold water, it takes a lot of energy to pump water, filter water, and treat water after use.
- coding123 7y ago
  There are people that know this. The vast majority of people are totally ignoring it. You can even type this, it will be skipped over. It's an absolute nightmare waiting to happen.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Depleting groundwater is mostly caused by agriculture, which in effect, is literally exporting water. Treated sewage is available for reuse as treated drinking water (sticking your wastewater treatment plant upstream of your water treatment plant makes people less squeamish about the idea), which means that it can form part of a cycle with >95% reuse capability. Reducing the amount in that flow doesn't do much to solve the water stress issues, particularly if people choose to reduce that component instead of the other components (such as lawn care) that actually do matter greatly.
Tharkun 7y ago
> by no means is water scarce in many regions What regions have this apparent overabundance of drinking water? And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). > while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. Is it? Where can I get one of these magical devices today? And do they work reliably in all climates? Specifically in those where drinking water is apparently abundant and where waste water treatment is free?
- choeger 7y ago
  > And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). It is suffering from too little water consumption, actually: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-Irrsinn-laesst-Deutschlands-Staedte-stinken.html https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-I... Where can I get one of these magical devices today? Here, for instance: https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html
  - Tharkun 7y ago
    Good luck getting solar water heaters to heat your 8liter/minute shower in the winter in those places where water is abundant. The article discusses a realistic approach to save large amounts of energy and to bring more comfort to water/energy poor regions. You, on the other hand, are peddling a fantasy.
boomlinde 7y ago
> This is really getting ridiculous. What's getting ridiculous here is the definition of "greenshaming". If you find the mere description of a more energy efficient alternative shameful, that's on you, not on the author of the article. > By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth And in many places it is. What's your point? The point of the blog is to point out and remind us of low-tech and obsolete solutions to conserve energy and depletable resources. As the article points out, you can "steamify" a regular shower at low cost and waste less freshwater. Whichever energy source you use to heat water then, you'll need less of it.
- wffurr 7y ago
  Thea article literally opens with "The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels". I don't think that's true, even for 70 L "wasteful" showers.
  - Daishiman 7y ago
    It is absolutely, completely true that a 70L warm shower for every human being is unsustainable; it even backs it up by comparing the amount of electrical energy needed to heat up that volume of water with the current production of wind energy worldwide.
    - Accujack 7y ago
      "Sustainable" or "Unsustainable" are imprecise terms. Our Sun is unsustainable long term if you think in terms of billions of years. What matters to many people here is whether a given use of energy makes a significant difference in present contributions to anthropogenic climate change. There's an unfortunate tendency for environmentalist folks to pile on to the idea of preventing climate change as validation for their views and to speak as if all actions which can be undertaken to benefit the environment are equally important to prevent a climate apocalypse. They are not. Personally, I'm in favor of widespread use of Nuclear generating stations. They're sustainable for millennia in terms of fuel abundance and the needed storage space for waste as well as being very low emitters of CO2 even when you amortize the amount of greenhouse gases generated during construction over their lifetime.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Water is not scarce, no, but safe and consumable water is; usually that's groundwater, and at this moment groundwater is used at a higher rate than it's being replenished (and remember that it takes hundreds if not thousands of years for e.g. rainfall to become groundwater). There have been instances in hot summers where water pressure has been lowered to reduce consumption. And there's a water crisis in Cape Town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis) where they basically ran out of water. So while most of us live fairly comfortably with running water, it's not something to take for granted. We had a long, very dry summer last year and it still has an effect on a lot of things. (in our case, dikes dried out too much which weakened them, enough to cause a problem in case of floods)
mcv 7y ago
It's not ridiculous at all. Salt sea water is not scarce, but clean fresh water is absolutely scarce in many places on Earth. There's a very good reason why many homes moved towards those 'low flow' showers 30 years ago: wasting less water. As the article points out, wasting less water automatically means wasting less energy (mostly for heating the water, but also cleaning and pumping it). Unfortunately the savings from those more efficient showers from 30 years ago have been undone by those fancy rain showers that everybody wants nowadays. Fortunately there are also rain showers that recycle the unused water; most shower water goes down the drain completely unused and quite clean. These shower systems recycle the clean water and as a result use much, much less water per minute[0]. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-loop-shower-is-cleaner-greener-and-can-save-you-1000-per-year https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-...
- cpwright 7y ago
  The ridiculous showers are in part a reaction to the limitations of low-flow shower heads. You can get around the limit of 2.5 GPM per head by having multiple heads that add to more than 2.5 GPM.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Shower water is going to go into the sanitary sewer, which, if your municipality is smart, is going to discharge upstream of your water treatment intake. Since the sewer and water system would effectively form a mostly-closed loop, reducing the amount of water you dump into the sewer isn't going to have a meaningful impact on the total water you're withdrawing from the environment--it's the lawn care (depending on the aquifer configurations) and agricultural water usage that removes the water from the system entirely.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Are there many municipalities that are that smart? I'm not so sure most municipalities even have separate sewer systems for toilets vs showers. And if they don't, then this is absolutely going to have an impact. Though I agree that lawn care and agricultural water use are massive issues.
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NeedMoreTea 7y ago
I live just outside the English Lake District, a region famous for both its beauty and sheer ridiculous abundance of excess water. It rains a lot round these parts (though that's changing). It's how it got to be the Lake District in the first place. Let me tell you what's ridiculous. Local news is telling how we can soon expect water shortages as rainfall patterns change and the entitled in water-deprived London get increasingly frequent in calls to take ours or our neighbours in God's own country - Yorkshire, as it's long past time for a national water grid etc. Purely because they are running out and not trying to manage their use. The south east's main water utility isn't being fined £100m a day for all the leaks they aren't fixing (apparently they have a terrible record, one of the worst in the country - if not the worst, for fixing leaks). I see no building regulations mandating greywater recovery in the short of water south east, or heat exchange from waste water. Just increasing calls to take someone else's and give them a water shortage problem too. Then no doubt continue ever wider until everyone has a water shortage. A little way south of here, Coca bleeding Cola (or maybe Pepsi, I forget) stuck in the most ridiculous plant to produce clever water. Apparently without limit. Extract millions of gallons yearly, distil it to purify it - at massive energy waste, then add a precise recipe of ingredients and minerals unrelated to the spring source they took it from. What's the fucking point of that? Just use the tap anywhere on the planet. Oh wait, they'd have to pay for their resource waste by the litre then. I think it is more accurate to say: Every single habit of industrial society has deliberately forgotten the connection with inputs, planet, sustainability, with encouragement from commerce and government. Once those inputs were always implicit in an activity, now it's an "externality" that can conveniently be ignored and pretend it doesn't matter. Few individuals have any connection with where stuff comes from any more, or the underlying cost. That is where the shame should lie. That's how everyone got in this mess - of resource depletion, climate heating, species loss, habitat loss and all the rest in the first place. All in my lifetime. So no, discouraging profligate waste is not ridiculous - regardless of if a mist shower is a practical idea or not. Probably easier to shower every other day as unless you work down a mine you're unlikely to actually need daily. In short, sustainable needs to be everywhere, in everything, always.
logfromblammo 7y ago
It was already ridiculous 10 years ago. The individuals that are receptive to it are already on board. Asking them to shower less or use less in the shower is playing right into the "dirty hippy" stereotype. You may not be able to smell the difference on an extreme-water-saving hygiene regime, but those who do take regular showers, using as much water as necessary, can detect it. Sesqui-daily (morning, evening, skip, repeat) "Navy showers", taken cold, are probably the best one can do without sacrificing inoffensiveness towards the end of the inter-bathing interval, as measured by a nose that is not already acclimated to your specific body odor. This requires a shower head with a powerful, relatively narrow spray, to blast the soap off fast, even with hard water. If you are not on board a ship with a limited supply of fresh water, or living in a bona fide desert, or experiencing a lengthy drought, it is not necessary to attempt this. Your individual contribution to freshwater usage is entirely insignificant compared with industrial and agricultural use. Every shower you will ever take during your entire lifetime is likely to be less than 4 acre-feet in total. California alone uses more than 30 million acre-feet of irrigation water every year. Great Plains farms collectively use enough water to deplete one of the largest underground aquifers on the planet. It's not you. If you really want to conserve, invent or improve an irrigation scheme, with installation and operating costs as cheap as center-pivot, that uses 1% less water. Then you could shower every waking moment of the rest of your life, under a 5 gpm showerhead, and still come out ahead on planetary karma.
DataGata 7y ago
Fresh water is a scarce resource, but only because it is required to feed the enormous number of plants needed to feed an enormous amount of livestock.

CapitalistCartr 7y ago

The author makes clear it saves water and energy without sacrificing comfort: "Jonas writes about his shower that 'it is not all a compromise in comfort, as it is sometimes suggested in the research papers of the 1970s' and I totally agree." So substantially more efficient with no loss of living standard. As for energy: " . . . while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources." All energy can be obtained from carbon-neutral sources, but as it's fungible, all savings are beneficial. Conservation is the lowest hanging fruit. I think your greenshaming diatribe is more personal.

cowmoo728 7y ago
I think it's a reaction to people constantly saying "take shorter showers!" when doing that would have minimal effect on climate change. Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis.
- coldpie 7y ago
  > Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis. Maybe, but people minimize the impact of day-to-day living. Which do you think is higher: US carbon emissions from passenger vehicles, or US carbon emissions from freight trucks, ships, trains and airplanes combined? In fact, it is passenger vehicles. Does your modern city dweller drive to work every day instead of taking transit? Individual choices really do have a real impact, it's not all due to industry and agriculture. Don't minimize the impact of individual choices. Source, US EPA: "The Transportation sector includes the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes, and other vehicles. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum-based products, like gasoline, in internal combustion engines. The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector come from other modes of transportation, including freight trucks, commercial aircraft, ships, boats, and trains, as well as pipelines and lubricants." https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
  - wffurr 7y ago
    What's the point of comparing vehicle emissions to the energy cost of hot showers? In fact, reducing access to long hot showers might increase vehicle emissions as fewer people would be inclined to bicycle, especially in hot weather.
    - coldpie 7y ago
      I'm not. The person I'm replying to said, "industrial and agricultural ... pollution [is] massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis." Many people use this premise as an excuse to avoid making changes in their own lives. However, my point is that it is a false premise. Industrial pollution is actually not massive compared to individual pollution.
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  Same with plastic. You can shame people who not recycle everything but till companies start reducing plastic packaging nothing will change.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    Protip: more things can be done at the same time, than just 1. The best reading, this is a case what we would call "whataboutism". Do note, packaging companies and excessive use of single-use plastics is horrible and absolutely should get fixed. But one can also make local changes about your life that also reduce your impact. Well, if you care.
    - salawat 7y ago
      >The best reading, this is a case what we would call "whataboutism". Do note, packaging companies and excessive use of single-use plastics is horrible and absolutely should get fixed. Not sure I necessarily buy that. Easiest fix in many cases with the lowest impact in terms of lives to directly change should be happening higher in the industrial chain to start with. There is little or no point to trying to change things in the immediacy of the end consumer until the upchain effects of getting industry in check have settled out, as the situation then may have completely changed from the current day to day consumer reality. >Protip: more things can be done at the same time, than just 1. Yes, things can be done in parallel. No, there is a certain point where if you start pushing the pain on the consumer first without reining in industry, you'll end up with the better environmental cost delta amplifiers (industry) creating more problems for the consumer to have to fix/compensate for. Example: People want alternate ways to heat water, therefore tanks/plumbing systems supplies capable of making solar based heating become more popular. The parts to make that consumer change possible though rely on an industrial process that ends up outputting more carbon than people save through the solar water heating system. What you want is: Figure out ways that industry isn't mitigating carbon debt in satisfying current demand. Tweak those to rein things in and figure out how the consequences propagate out and how it impacts consumer behavior. Then rinse and repeat. Remember, if you create a hole through consumer behavior changes alone, all it does is signal capital into the most expedient form for utilizing current technology to try to create new demand from the change of the economic landscape. If your current technology was part of the problem your consumer behavior change was meant to remedy, you just ticked off a bunch of people when the actual figures come out saying you didn't realize the payoff, and you further hurt your credibility in suggesting additional changes. Once you have everyone playing to the same tune industrially, the societal approach to conservation and what can or can't be done fundamentally changes. I hope that makes sense.
t34543 7y ago
I think you sacrifice a lot of comfort with a mist shower. I enjoy high GPM showers - because it feels really good and it’s one of my favorite things every morning. hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off, I imagine it would be even harder in a misting system.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  I imagine that all the little mist ports would almost immediately clog with lime scale, and the shower would quickly be reduced to utter uselessness.
  - Klathmon 7y ago
    If they're anything like the misting irrigation systems, they never clog even if they are literally covered in dirt and mud for most of their life.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Covered is fine, because the water pressure can clear out the path. The problem is stuff inside the pipes.
      - Klathmon 7y ago
        the ones at a place I worked used reclaimed water. I don't know how well filtered or treated it was, but I know that it would leave horrible water spots all over anyone who parked too close to them.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  >hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off Isn't it the opposite (i.e. soft water is the problematic one)?
  - t34543 7y ago
    Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I was mistaken.
tlarkworthy 7y ago
I am with the OP, I think a lot of suggestions come from people with no quantitate intuition. Switching shower tech will not move the needle in any useful way. In fact, think it will be harmful in some ways as it further acclimates a sloppy non-quantitate approach to resource efficiency.
scythe 7y ago
I used mist showerheads in the freshman dorms at Georgia Tech. In my experience, it absolutely was a huge sacrifice of comfort. I was always excited to take a real shower every time I went home for vacation.

Klathmon 7y ago

The article does put some numbers to the energy needed to heat the water. They estimate it at being equal to driving 3.5 – 7 km with a relatively fuel efficient car per shower. They also say they didn't count the energy costs from water treatment and distribution. And they also point out that all of the current wind turbines in the world could only power 1 billion people's daily shower, only considering the heating of the water... If there's a way to reduce the cost of showering without any significant decrease in quality of life, why not encourage it?

mikepurvis 7y ago

I agree. A low-flow toilet still takes ~5 litres to flush; definitely the obvious thing to do is capture the used shower/sink water into a reservoir that then is used to flush the toilet throughout the day. If the reservoir is inside, then even the energy used to heat the water is not lost, as it will warm the house while the tank cools down. But whenever I've looked into greywater capture systems, they seem mostly focused on an outdoor storage drum with rain-barrel type applications in mind (garden irrigation, etc). I mean, the other option is just not to have a shower every single day. I know the thought is horrifying to some, but a fully-grown adult can be perfectly presentable on 2-3 showers a week.

throwaway123x2 7y ago
I start stinking after ~18 hours no matter what deodorant I use.
- shantly 7y ago
  I need a couple showers a day or my bedding would start to collect oils & such so much that it starts causing skin issues when I sleep in it. I mean it does anyway but slowly enough that I can go a reasonable amount of time between washing it. A lot of my saved water and energy from showers would just go to washing all my bedding every day or two. [EDIT] of course I could clean off some other way, too, but dropping to only bathing in any serious fashion less than once a day is not something I'm much interested in trying, for this reason if no other.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Review your dietary habits (certain foods will make you stink much more, probably booze as well if I had to guess) and switch to an antiperspirant brand like Certain Dri
- Filligree 7y ago
  Do you use soap, on anything but your hands? That seems to be a prime cause of smelliness, and it's entirely unnecessary.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

Water isn't really scarce but it is over-extracted and as per typical in this overly individualist society, that gets thrown back on the individual to make tokenistic gestures of self sacrifice by buying more stuff. The correct solution to over-extraction is political policies that put the health of the whole environment, including surface and ground water, above the selfishness of industry.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

I think people aren't as aware of how power intensive showers are as maybe they should be. It takes roughly 10kw to provide a decent instant hot water shower. That's roughly the output of 40 domestic solar panels at 100% capacity. Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Taken another way it's the same amount of energy as it required to propel a scooter or small motorcycle along at 50mph. How many people start their showers several minutes before the are actually ready to step into them?

icebraining 7y ago
> Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Or you could just slowly heat water in a well insulated tank. And if you paint your tank black and put it in the sun, you may even be able to skip the PV panels :)
Filligree 7y ago
Is it common where you're from to use 10kW water heaters for a shower? We've got that at our cottage (gas-based, not electrical), but that's mainly because there's no grid connection. Everywhere else I've been, people just use tanks. It might take a few hours to heat up from nothing, but even a mid-sized tank can easily do 2-3 showers.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  At a wild guess I'd say 50% of UK homes would have at least one instant hot water electric shower. The other option being a power shower driven from the hot water loop on their gas central heating.
howard941 7y ago
You can heat water with DC and no inverter. Finding a DC water heater that's safe and inexpensive and voltage swing-tolerant might be a challenge.

oddeyed 7y ago

You've approached this as if you're concerned that someone will take away your shower. You could also view this article as saying "hey, look at this low-cost and low-resource-intensity way to make luxurious daily showers accessible to more people!" There's a huge number of people around the world who want better lives, the true challenge of the environmental crisis is how that can be delivered without trashing nature (and maybe inadvertently destroying our own civilisation).

benologist 7y ago
If you get enough drought daily showers may indeed be threatened - about ten years ago my city took drastic steps to reduce the time spent in showers by distributing 4 minute timers to use as part of a larger effort to reduce residential water consumption. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-conserve-brisbane24-2009nov24-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-co...

justinph 7y ago

Water is more scarce than you think. We're depleting groundwater faster than it is being replenished in a _vast_ swath of the country. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/06/mapping-strain-our-water/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/0... Even in regions where surface water is plentiful, making water fit for human use is a _significant_ user of energy. Even if it was cold water, it takes a lot of energy to pump water, filter water, and treat water after use.

coding123 7y ago
There are people that know this. The vast majority of people are totally ignoring it. You can even type this, it will be skipped over. It's an absolute nightmare waiting to happen.
jcranmer 7y ago
Depleting groundwater is mostly caused by agriculture, which in effect, is literally exporting water. Treated sewage is available for reuse as treated drinking water (sticking your wastewater treatment plant upstream of your water treatment plant makes people less squeamish about the idea), which means that it can form part of a cycle with >95% reuse capability. Reducing the amount in that flow doesn't do much to solve the water stress issues, particularly if people choose to reduce that component instead of the other components (such as lawn care) that actually do matter greatly.

Tharkun 7y ago

> by no means is water scarce in many regions What regions have this apparent overabundance of drinking water? And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). > while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. Is it? Where can I get one of these magical devices today? And do they work reliably in all climates? Specifically in those where drinking water is apparently abundant and where waste water treatment is free?

choeger 7y ago
> And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). It is suffering from too little water consumption, actually: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-Irrsinn-laesst-Deutschlands-Staedte-stinken.html https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-I... Where can I get one of these magical devices today? Here, for instance: https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html
- Tharkun 7y ago
  Good luck getting solar water heaters to heat your 8liter/minute shower in the winter in those places where water is abundant. The article discusses a realistic approach to save large amounts of energy and to bring more comfort to water/energy poor regions. You, on the other hand, are peddling a fantasy.

boomlinde 7y ago

> This is really getting ridiculous. What's getting ridiculous here is the definition of "greenshaming". If you find the mere description of a more energy efficient alternative shameful, that's on you, not on the author of the article. > By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth And in many places it is. What's your point? The point of the blog is to point out and remind us of low-tech and obsolete solutions to conserve energy and depletable resources. As the article points out, you can "steamify" a regular shower at low cost and waste less freshwater. Whichever energy source you use to heat water then, you'll need less of it.

wffurr 7y ago
Thea article literally opens with "The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels". I don't think that's true, even for 70 L "wasteful" showers.
- Daishiman 7y ago
  It is absolutely, completely true that a 70L warm shower for every human being is unsustainable; it even backs it up by comparing the amount of electrical energy needed to heat up that volume of water with the current production of wind energy worldwide.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    "Sustainable" or "Unsustainable" are imprecise terms. Our Sun is unsustainable long term if you think in terms of billions of years. What matters to many people here is whether a given use of energy makes a significant difference in present contributions to anthropogenic climate change. There's an unfortunate tendency for environmentalist folks to pile on to the idea of preventing climate change as validation for their views and to speak as if all actions which can be undertaken to benefit the environment are equally important to prevent a climate apocalypse. They are not. Personally, I'm in favor of widespread use of Nuclear generating stations. They're sustainable for millennia in terms of fuel abundance and the needed storage space for waste as well as being very low emitters of CO2 even when you amortize the amount of greenhouse gases generated during construction over their lifetime.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

Water is not scarce, no, but safe and consumable water is; usually that's groundwater, and at this moment groundwater is used at a higher rate than it's being replenished (and remember that it takes hundreds if not thousands of years for e.g. rainfall to become groundwater). There have been instances in hot summers where water pressure has been lowered to reduce consumption. And there's a water crisis in Cape Town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis) where they basically ran out of water. So while most of us live fairly comfortably with running water, it's not something to take for granted. We had a long, very dry summer last year and it still has an effect on a lot of things. (in our case, dikes dried out too much which weakened them, enough to cause a problem in case of floods)

mcv 7y ago

It's not ridiculous at all. Salt sea water is not scarce, but clean fresh water is absolutely scarce in many places on Earth. There's a very good reason why many homes moved towards those 'low flow' showers 30 years ago: wasting less water. As the article points out, wasting less water automatically means wasting less energy (mostly for heating the water, but also cleaning and pumping it). Unfortunately the savings from those more efficient showers from 30 years ago have been undone by those fancy rain showers that everybody wants nowadays. Fortunately there are also rain showers that recycle the unused water; most shower water goes down the drain completely unused and quite clean. These shower systems recycle the clean water and as a result use much, much less water per minute[0]. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-loop-shower-is-cleaner-greener-and-can-save-you-1000-per-year https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-...

cpwright 7y ago
The ridiculous showers are in part a reaction to the limitations of low-flow shower heads. You can get around the limit of 2.5 GPM per head by having multiple heads that add to more than 2.5 GPM.
jcranmer 7y ago
Shower water is going to go into the sanitary sewer, which, if your municipality is smart, is going to discharge upstream of your water treatment intake. Since the sewer and water system would effectively form a mostly-closed loop, reducing the amount of water you dump into the sewer isn't going to have a meaningful impact on the total water you're withdrawing from the environment--it's the lawn care (depending on the aquifer configurations) and agricultural water usage that removes the water from the system entirely.
- mcv 7y ago
  Are there many municipalities that are that smart? I'm not so sure most municipalities even have separate sewer systems for toilets vs showers. And if they don't, then this is absolutely going to have an impact. Though I agree that lawn care and agricultural water use are massive issues.

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NeedMoreTea 7y ago

I live just outside the English Lake District, a region famous for both its beauty and sheer ridiculous abundance of excess water. It rains a lot round these parts (though that's changing). It's how it got to be the Lake District in the first place. Let me tell you what's ridiculous. Local news is telling how we can soon expect water shortages as rainfall patterns change and the entitled in water-deprived London get increasingly frequent in calls to take ours or our neighbours in God's own country - Yorkshire, as it's long past time for a national water grid etc. Purely because they are running out and not trying to manage their use. The south east's main water utility isn't being fined £100m a day for all the leaks they aren't fixing (apparently they have a terrible record, one of the worst in the country - if not the worst, for fixing leaks). I see no building regulations mandating greywater recovery in the short of water south east, or heat exchange from waste water. Just increasing calls to take someone else's and give them a water shortage problem too. Then no doubt continue ever wider until everyone has a water shortage. A little way south of here, Coca bleeding Cola (or maybe Pepsi, I forget) stuck in the most ridiculous plant to produce clever water. Apparently without limit. Extract millions of gallons yearly, distil it to purify it - at massive energy waste, then add a precise recipe of ingredients and minerals unrelated to the spring source they took it from. What's the fucking point of that? Just use the tap anywhere on the planet. Oh wait, they'd have to pay for their resource waste by the litre then. I think it is more accurate to say: Every single habit of industrial society has deliberately forgotten the connection with inputs, planet, sustainability, with encouragement from commerce and government. Once those inputs were always implicit in an activity, now it's an "externality" that can conveniently be ignored and pretend it doesn't matter. Few individuals have any connection with where stuff comes from any more, or the underlying cost. That is where the shame should lie. That's how everyone got in this mess - of resource depletion, climate heating, species loss, habitat loss and all the rest in the first place. All in my lifetime. So no, discouraging profligate waste is not ridiculous - regardless of if a mist shower is a practical idea or not. Probably easier to shower every other day as unless you work down a mine you're unlikely to actually need daily. In short, sustainable needs to be everywhere, in everything, always.

logfromblammo 7y ago

It was already ridiculous 10 years ago. The individuals that are receptive to it are already on board. Asking them to shower less or use less in the shower is playing right into the "dirty hippy" stereotype. You may not be able to smell the difference on an extreme-water-saving hygiene regime, but those who do take regular showers, using as much water as necessary, can detect it. Sesqui-daily (morning, evening, skip, repeat) "Navy showers", taken cold, are probably the best one can do without sacrificing inoffensiveness towards the end of the inter-bathing interval, as measured by a nose that is not already acclimated to your specific body odor. This requires a shower head with a powerful, relatively narrow spray, to blast the soap off fast, even with hard water. If you are not on board a ship with a limited supply of fresh water, or living in a bona fide desert, or experiencing a lengthy drought, it is not necessary to attempt this. Your individual contribution to freshwater usage is entirely insignificant compared with industrial and agricultural use. Every shower you will ever take during your entire lifetime is likely to be less than 4 acre-feet in total. California alone uses more than 30 million acre-feet of irrigation water every year. Great Plains farms collectively use enough water to deplete one of the largest underground aquifers on the planet. It's not you. If you really want to conserve, invent or improve an irrigation scheme, with installation and operating costs as cheap as center-pivot, that uses 1% less water. Then you could shower every waking moment of the rest of your life, under a 5 gpm showerhead, and still come out ahead on planetary karma.

DataGata 7y ago

Fresh water is a scarce resource, but only because it is required to feed the enormous number of plants needed to feed an enormous amount of livestock.