7 ms·

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence? (2019)

32 points by xvilka 4y ago

readthenotes1 4y ago
Showers not until the 1970s? Maybe in the Netherlands. In the US, I understand it was common by the late 1950s.
ginko 4y ago
I usually take about 3-4 minutes to shower but when I shower I want PLENTY of HOT water. You may claim these mist showers provide the same comfort but I'm just not buying it. The constant legal push for water saving armatures in showers is something that bothers me to no end. Especially since I live in Norway where we're neither lacking water nor renewable electricity.
michaelteter 4y ago
Mist is a very poor way to deliver heat energy. It may be more efficient for delivering wetness, but any heat you put into tiny water particles is lost to the air before the droplet reaches your body. To save water and energy, the Shower Loop appears to be a much better solution: https://showerloop.cc/ https://showerloop.cc/
- leetrout 4y ago
  Ha. Like a dishwasher's recirculation.
- forgotusername6 4y ago
  I like the loop idea. I imagine some people would find it unhygienic but it is no worse than a bath. What about if you separated the heat from the wetness? Deliver heat with a lamp and leave the water colder? I wonder whether it would be a nice experience or not.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    maybe even separate heat from polar solvents from nonpolar solvents? (ok, the last separation would make recirculation difficult, unless they're miscible)
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Whatever happened to using the hot shower waste water to heat up the incoming cold water? People used to talk about it all the time, and I'm planning on implementing it when I remodel my bathroom.
encoderer 4y ago
I just cannot sign up for this vision of the future where people are eating plant protein meat and never cooking on an open flame and avoiding now… hot showers? No thanks. Hard pass. This is all terrible.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  > No thanks. Hard pass. This is all terrible. Of course it sounds terrible, but is it more or less terrible than the collapse of civilization, which is what seems likely to happen as a result of climate instability and radical ecological changes, should we continue on our present course? "Hard pass" is a choice for the latter.
  - encoderer 4y ago
    To me, no meat and cold showers is the collapse of civilization. Or at the very least, the start of it.
- roninghost 4y ago
  The autor has a nice article about not enough fires: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustion-too-little-fire.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustio...
- wincy 4y ago
  I’ve just given up on the guilt. I live near one of the largest rivers in the world. I’m surrounded by the most fertile farmland in the world. These may be problems for people that live in places that in retrospect aren’t great for human habitation, but not here. I think I’m going to buy myself a shower head with a removable water regulator for Christmas. I spent two weeks in hotels and my home shower feels terrible in comparison to that water pressure. Why do the hotels get to have objectively better showers than I do?
  - encoderer 4y ago
    My favorite is the line “there is not enough grazing land in the world for people to eat as much meat as Americans and Europeans do” Well, there does seem to be enough land for the American and European cows. Other places will eat other things. Like they always have.
_dain_ 4y ago
>The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. >The shower doesn’t get much attention in the context of climate change. However, like airplanes, cars, and heating systems, it has become a very wasteful and carbon-intensive way to provide for a basic need: washing the body. Each day, many of us pour roughly 70 litres of hot water over our bodies in order to be “clean”. this is your brain on energy austerity. someone tell the author about this little thing called uranium fission. also what's with the scare-quotes around "clean"? >In principle, the energy for a shower could be generated by renewable energy sources. However, if eight billion people were to shower daily, total energy use per year would be 6,132 terawatt-hours (TWh). This is eight times the energy produced by wind turbines worldwide in 2017 (745 TWh). All (current) wind turbines in the world could provide only 1 billion people with a “sustainable” daily shower. Furthermore, the use of renewable energy sources doesn’t lower the water use of the daily shower. To be clear, renewable energy is part of the solution – solar boilers, biomass, heat generating windmills – but we also need to look at the demand side of washing in a post-carbon world. lmao, saying the quiet part out loud. spend trillions on global energiewende, and we can't shower once we get to the promised land. >A nine minute hot shower per day is by no means a basic necessity: it’s a treat. eat shit. this is what they want: the whole world locked into a permanently sub-21st century standard of living. renewables don't scale, so their ideology has to tell you it's a good thing to be poor, and that enjoying a hot shower is a sign of wickedness. no "treats" for bad pets. all the wonders of modernity happened because we figured out how to harness exponentially more energy per capita, first by coal, then by oil, then by fission. one day, God willing, we'll jump to fusion. but if the Devil gets his way and we let the degrowthers flatten the curve: that's it. our standard of living hits a ceiling and stays there forever. that's what they really mean by "sustainability".
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  We never transcended oil for fission as we did for coal. Our way of life is still riding a glut of fossil fuel use. This probably won’t matter in my lifetime, but that energy glut is not infinite - and we still need fossil fuels to produce that ‘renewable’ and fission equipment.
  - 4y ago
ilammy 4y ago
What’s with the “water spending” numbers here? It’s not like the water in shower gets “used up”. Your meter counts 50 liters, but that’s not 50 liters of precious water supply permanently removed from the planet.
- martyvis 4y ago
  The issue is that capturing, storing and distributing potable water is very expensive and difficult in many regions. Famously much of Australia struggles often with not having sufficient fresh water during droughts. Yet we have it easy compared to many areas of developing countries.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
I have to say, the author's approach to showering is very Calvinist. People are enjoying showers too much and too often! While I understand their concerns around energy usage, the focus and on water usage (or implied "wastage") feels, to me who lives in a very different country, rather odd. That water isn't destroyed, it'll be back eventually, assuming we're not consuming fossil water. It's definitely good to reduce excessive water usage, just from an infrastructure and sustainable water take POV, but this reminds me of the concerted media effort around climate change to make it the individual consumer's responsibility to reduce emissions, taking the focus away from the corporations whose profit has always come with an atmospheric externality... In other words, if you want to save water in Die Niederlande, look at industrial/agricultural usage first, showers third, after "let's maintain pipes to minimise leaks".
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  I agree. People need relaxation, recreation, etc. It's much healthier if it's a longer shower or something similar than say, drugs or smoking (unless if your burning your skin in the shower- then you could potentially be triggering cancer)
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  I'm Dutch. The notion of water shortages in that country is ridiculous. There's plenty of water. There is a shortage of ground water that is being used for a lot of things including intensive agriculture and drinking water. Ground water is nice because it is there and typically very clean so you don't need to do a lot of filtering before you can use it. However, using ground water at the current rate is not sustainable because we are depleting it at a rate that is higher than it is being topped up by nature. But there's plenty of other water: rivers, lakes, etc. We actually spend lots of energy pumping water out to sea to keep the land dry. Perfectly good fresh water that we have way too much off. Way more than we will ever need. The reason people are trying to get consumers to save water in the Netherlands is very simple: it's cheaper than making the necessary investments to scale up water production. Cleaning up water takes a bit of energy and so does heating it up. So yes, it has a price. However, we know how get clean energy now. So, that's a solvable problem. And it's not that expensive even. High gas prices are currently causing people to think very hard about how to upgrade their houses. The real money savings are house heating. My parents switched off their gas heating system a few weeks ago after being faced with 1000 euro monthly gas bills. Only a fraction of that is showers. It's a recently renovated house that is pretty well insulated. The issue is simply that gas is really expensive now. Luckily, they have a wood pallet stove. Also not cheap to run but a lot cheaper. The real solution for them will be a heat pump and some access to renewable power. And the financial incentives for that are there now in the form of high gas prices.
_xnmw 4y ago
I live in Ukraine, where yesterday the water (and central heating) was cut off due to missile strikes. But as a Muslim, we are religiously recommended to take a ritual bath on Friday. So I took a "shower" the way it was described in our medieval religious textbooks[1], from a store of cold bottled water, using a total of about 5 litres. Simply pour over oneself with a small jug, 3 times over the head, and a couple times over the right and left shoulder, thoroughly rubbing with one's hand over the entire body after each pour. Though cold, it was extremely and thoroughly refreshing (and different from a simple cold shower). Highly recommend you try it once, the shower-from-a-small-bucket method, that campers and other outdoors people are used to when dealing with limited supplies of cold water. After it was over, I remember thinking to myself, this isn't too bad, I could live like this if I had to. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghusl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghusl
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- neonate 4y ago
  Your fortitude is admirable. Please stay safe.
Tade0 4y ago
There are plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick before we get to reducing showering, one instance being home insulation. Meanwhile in places with district heating water is commonly heated via combined heat and power plants, making the carbon point somewhat moot. Of course in a fully-renewable scenario there would be no steam plant to provide heat, but here's where nuclear enters the picture. As for water: food has orders of magnitude higher water requirements. Granted, it's not the same standard, but at the same time you can't just pour whatever on your crops. Some treatment is always required. https://www.eniscuola.net/en/mediateca/water-footprint-of-food/ https://www.eniscuola.net/en/mediateca/water-footprint-of-fo...
downvotetruth 4y ago
> Why Do We Shower? Get itchy fecal matter off behind & not have to mess with aiming bidet wand spraying maybe fecal water outside bowl or mess with a rag with fecal chunks.
choeger 4y ago
The author seems to neglect that heat from the water like the water itself can and should be recycled. Ideally, taking a hot bath or a long shower should just be a different form of heating your apartment or house. The same way your refrigerator or your kettle should contribute to the room temperature. If we then also generate heat with heatpumps or solar power (or both), I don't see any reason to not indulge in long showers.
- morsch 4y ago
  I guess leaving the water in the tub is an easy way to reclaim the heat, but is there any place where the same is done to shower water (or all waste water) on a large scale? Maybe arctic research stations?
  - jhoechtl 4y ago
    The warm bathwater humidity will make your walls moldy!
    - morsch 4y ago
      Or help save additional energy otherwise expended on an air humidifier...
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  IMO if you have heat pump water heater, recycling dirty water would be good albeit complex way to reclaim the heat.
throw0101c 4y ago
Recommend the book Beyond Soap, written by a professor and clinical dermatologist, on how we're 'too clean', especially with regards to applying unnecessary chemicals on our skin: > Sensitive skin is one of the most buzzed-about topics in dermatology today. It can be painful, debilitating, and inconvenient. Astonishingly, many of the women and men who suffer from problem skin are unknowingly causing it by washing too frequently and using too many skincare and beauty products. Often, we slather ourselves in creams and balms that can actually damage the skin. The miracle products we buy at department stores, specialty shops, and pharmacies have the potential to make us less attractive and prematurely age our skin. > In Beyond Soap, leading dermatologist Dr. Skotnicki explains that the best state for skin is the natural state. On its own, the skin is better equipped to fight wrinkles, stave off aging and act as armor that protects the body from infection. Every time we slather, spread, hydrate, or soften the skin, we nudge the skin away from its healthiest natural condition. Skotnicki demystifies the claims of commonly used beauty products and offers a common-sense approach to cleansing the body along with her product-elimination diet that has helped thousands of patients suffering from a wide array of skin conditions, and a skincare regime that will help you maintain skin health, fight aging, and keep your skin reaction-free forever. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35733533-beyond-soap https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35733533-beyond-soap * https://drsandyskotnicki.com/dr-sandy-skotnicki/ https://drsandyskotnicki.com/dr-sandy-skotnicki/
- causi 4y ago
  her product-elimination diet Surely you perceive how full of shit that sounds.
  - tbran 4y ago
    I read the book (judging by your low-effort snark, you did not) and found it quite useful. For those that like to read, the book has quite a few ways to reduce and change your hygiene regimen and figure out if you're having reactions to certain products. A bit dry, but definitely made me want to switch to soaps/shampoos/etc with minimal scents and additives.
  - wincy 4y ago
hahamrfunnyguy 4y ago
I do a lot to reduce my carbon footprint already, so giving up my daily 5-10 minute hot shower is going to be towards the end of my list when it comes to reducing further. Living in the North East US, we have plenty of water here and shortages have never been an issue. If we can stop growing water-hungry crops in the desert there will be plenty of water to go around. Moving to hybrid solar/electric or solar/gas water heating is the next logical step. Direct solar heating of water works very well.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Mist showers would need to use distilled water to prevent lung damage from breathing in hard water minerals. This is why thermal humidifiers can be air-safer than ultrasonic humidifiers (unless using distilled water).
- wincy 4y ago
  I got rid of all of my ultrasonic humidifiers for this reason. Ultrasonic throws up all sorts of PM2.5 particles which are bad to breathe in. Boiling your water has no such potentially dangerous drawbacks.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Venta humidifiers are a good alternative as well.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Is there risk of parasites too? FWIW it's not unlikely you'll breathe in some when using normal shower too, but mist certainly more concerning.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  >Mist showers would need to use distilled water to prevent lung damage from breathing in hard water minerals. Unless you have a source for this, it sounds like some strong "programmer medicine". The lungs have cilia, mucus, and leukocytes that can remove impressive amounts of contaminants (like coal dust or tar from smoking) before it starts becoming a problem, so it's hard to believe hard water mist for less than an hour per day poses any risk. Your showerhead/water being contaminated with Legionella would though.
jasonhansel 4y ago
> Each day, many of us pour roughly 70 litres of hot water over our bodies in order to be “clean”. That seems like an odd use of scare quotes. Is the implication that showers don't actually clean you?
dghughes 4y ago
> Heating 76.5 litres of water (8.9 minutes x 8.6 litres per minute) from 18 to 38 degrees Celsius requires 2.1 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. In late September this year 2022 my region was hit by a hurricane. My power mine was off for 10 days. Of all the things that I missed it was my daily shower. I have a butane camp stove and used it to heat water it's actually very good much better than my electric stove. I also bought a 3kW generator and an electric kettle. My plan was on day 8 to have a bath so I filled the tub just a bit to save on effort. And then I heated water in a pot on the stove and in the kettle. I did that over and over many times but I could only get the water from 13C to 20C in an hour and a half. I just sat in the water and had a "bird bath" but even that was incredibly cold to the point my muscles ached. From that experience I can certainly appreciate the amount of energy it takes to heat up even a small amount of water.
hackrnusr 4y ago
Many people find long hot showers relaxing. Mental health is more important than conserving "scarce resources" like water and energy. The ocean is literally full of water. The sun is very bright. Research will eventually help us make better use of these "scarce resources" without burning (gasp!) any fossil fuels. Until then, I'm going to continue enjoying my 20-minute daily routine. But thanks for caring.
- armatav 4y ago
  Exactly. Neurotic people trying to impose their rules on people to reinforce their own energy-apocalypse ideology. Split the atom.
- codingrightnow 4y ago
  I am seeing way too many of these odd comments. If you're not interested in reducing your carbon footprint right now by reducing the energy necessary to pump, clean, and heat your bathing water you can keep that to yourself. Did you read the article? It's not trying to guilt trip you yet you react as if you've been personally attacked. This article is probably more for people like me who feel guilty showering daily due the relative lack of necessity compared to the environmental impact. Green energy isn't carbon neutral, just better than the alternatives and doesn't have a net zero impact. If you're saying we shouldn't worry about our energy production's environmental impact because eventually fusion will become reality, there is a long mean-time where our personal choices are still disruptive to the environment. I'd gladly introduce this type of system if I can do so with a reliable commercial product or a diy I could figure out. So this article is for people like me, people who'd also rather not have to wade through negative comments and actually get to the useful ones faster.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
armatav 4y ago
No thanks - I think I’ll stick with my three hour power shower at maximum heat.

32 points by xvilka 4y ago

Showers not until the 1970s? Maybe in the Netherlands. In the US, I understand it was common by the late 1950s.

I usually take about 3-4 minutes to shower but when I shower I want PLENTY of HOT water. You may claim these mist showers provide the same comfort but I'm just not buying it. The constant legal push for water saving armatures in showers is something that bothers me to no end. Especially since I live in Norway where we're neither lacking water nor renewable electricity.

michaelteter 4y ago

Mist is a very poor way to deliver heat energy. It may be more efficient for delivering wetness, but any heat you put into tiny water particles is lost to the air before the droplet reaches your body. To save water and energy, the Shower Loop appears to be a much better solution: https://showerloop.cc/ https://showerloop.cc/

leetrout 4y ago
Ha. Like a dishwasher's recirculation.
forgotusername6 4y ago
I like the loop idea. I imagine some people would find it unhygienic but it is no worse than a bath. What about if you separated the heat from the wetness? Deliver heat with a lamp and leave the water colder? I wonder whether it would be a nice experience or not.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  maybe even separate heat from polar solvents from nonpolar solvents? (ok, the last separation would make recirculation difficult, unless they're miscible)
rolenthedeep 4y ago
Whatever happened to using the hot shower waste water to heat up the incoming cold water? People used to talk about it all the time, and I'm planning on implementing it when I remodel my bathroom.

encoderer 4y ago

I just cannot sign up for this vision of the future where people are eating plant protein meat and never cooking on an open flame and avoiding now… hot showers? No thanks. Hard pass. This is all terrible.

marssaxman 4y ago
> No thanks. Hard pass. This is all terrible. Of course it sounds terrible, but is it more or less terrible than the collapse of civilization, which is what seems likely to happen as a result of climate instability and radical ecological changes, should we continue on our present course? "Hard pass" is a choice for the latter.
- encoderer 4y ago
  To me, no meat and cold showers is the collapse of civilization. Or at the very least, the start of it.
roninghost 4y ago
The autor has a nice article about not enough fires: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustion-too-little-fire.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustio...
wincy 4y ago
I’ve just given up on the guilt. I live near one of the largest rivers in the world. I’m surrounded by the most fertile farmland in the world. These may be problems for people that live in places that in retrospect aren’t great for human habitation, but not here. I think I’m going to buy myself a shower head with a removable water regulator for Christmas. I spent two weeks in hotels and my home shower feels terrible in comparison to that water pressure. Why do the hotels get to have objectively better showers than I do?
- encoderer 4y ago
  My favorite is the line “there is not enough grazing land in the world for people to eat as much meat as Americans and Europeans do” Well, there does seem to be enough land for the American and European cows. Other places will eat other things. Like they always have.

_dain_ 4y ago

>The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. >The shower doesn’t get much attention in the context of climate change. However, like airplanes, cars, and heating systems, it has become a very wasteful and carbon-intensive way to provide for a basic need: washing the body. Each day, many of us pour roughly 70 litres of hot water over our bodies in order to be “clean”. this is your brain on energy austerity. someone tell the author about this little thing called uranium fission. also what's with the scare-quotes around "clean"? >In principle, the energy for a shower could be generated by renewable energy sources. However, if eight billion people were to shower daily, total energy use per year would be 6,132 terawatt-hours (TWh). This is eight times the energy produced by wind turbines worldwide in 2017 (745 TWh). All (current) wind turbines in the world could provide only 1 billion people with a “sustainable” daily shower. Furthermore, the use of renewable energy sources doesn’t lower the water use of the daily shower. To be clear, renewable energy is part of the solution – solar boilers, biomass, heat generating windmills – but we also need to look at the demand side of washing in a post-carbon world. lmao, saying the quiet part out loud. spend trillions on global energiewende, and we can't shower once we get to the promised land. >A nine minute hot shower per day is by no means a basic necessity: it’s a treat. eat shit. this is what they want: the whole world locked into a permanently sub-21st century standard of living. renewables don't scale, so their ideology has to tell you it's a good thing to be poor, and that enjoying a hot shower is a sign of wickedness. no "treats" for bad pets. all the wonders of modernity happened because we figured out how to harness exponentially more energy per capita, first by coal, then by oil, then by fission. one day, God willing, we'll jump to fusion. but if the Devil gets his way and we let the degrowthers flatten the curve: that's it. our standard of living hits a ceiling and stays there forever. that's what they really mean by "sustainability".

germinalphrase 4y ago
We never transcended oil for fission as we did for coal. Our way of life is still riding a glut of fossil fuel use. This probably won’t matter in my lifetime, but that energy glut is not infinite - and we still need fossil fuels to produce that ‘renewable’ and fission equipment.
- 4y ago

ilammy 4y ago

What’s with the “water spending” numbers here? It’s not like the water in shower gets “used up”. Your meter counts 50 liters, but that’s not 50 liters of precious water supply permanently removed from the planet.

martyvis 4y ago
The issue is that capturing, storing and distributing potable water is very expensive and difficult in many regions. Famously much of Australia struggles often with not having sufficient fresh water during droughts. Yet we have it easy compared to many areas of developing countries.

EdwardDiego 4y ago

I have to say, the author's approach to showering is very Calvinist. People are enjoying showers too much and too often! While I understand their concerns around energy usage, the focus and on water usage (or implied "wastage") feels, to me who lives in a very different country, rather odd. That water isn't destroyed, it'll be back eventually, assuming we're not consuming fossil water. It's definitely good to reduce excessive water usage, just from an infrastructure and sustainable water take POV, but this reminds me of the concerted media effort around climate change to make it the individual consumer's responsibility to reduce emissions, taking the focus away from the corporations whose profit has always come with an atmospheric externality... In other words, if you want to save water in Die Niederlande, look at industrial/agricultural usage first, showers third, after "let's maintain pipes to minimise leaks".

ThunderSizzle 4y ago
I agree. People need relaxation, recreation, etc. It's much healthier if it's a longer shower or something similar than say, drugs or smoking (unless if your burning your skin in the shower- then you could potentially be triggering cancer)
jillesvangurp 4y ago
I'm Dutch. The notion of water shortages in that country is ridiculous. There's plenty of water. There is a shortage of ground water that is being used for a lot of things including intensive agriculture and drinking water. Ground water is nice because it is there and typically very clean so you don't need to do a lot of filtering before you can use it. However, using ground water at the current rate is not sustainable because we are depleting it at a rate that is higher than it is being topped up by nature. But there's plenty of other water: rivers, lakes, etc. We actually spend lots of energy pumping water out to sea to keep the land dry. Perfectly good fresh water that we have way too much off. Way more than we will ever need. The reason people are trying to get consumers to save water in the Netherlands is very simple: it's cheaper than making the necessary investments to scale up water production. Cleaning up water takes a bit of energy and so does heating it up. So yes, it has a price. However, we know how get clean energy now. So, that's a solvable problem. And it's not that expensive even. High gas prices are currently causing people to think very hard about how to upgrade their houses. The real money savings are house heating. My parents switched off their gas heating system a few weeks ago after being faced with 1000 euro monthly gas bills. Only a fraction of that is showers. It's a recently renovated house that is pretty well insulated. The issue is simply that gas is really expensive now. Luckily, they have a wood pallet stove. Also not cheap to run but a lot cheaper. The real solution for them will be a heat pump and some access to renewable power. And the financial incentives for that are there now in the form of high gas prices.

_xnmw 4y ago

I live in Ukraine, where yesterday the water (and central heating) was cut off due to missile strikes. But as a Muslim, we are religiously recommended to take a ritual bath on Friday. So I took a "shower" the way it was described in our medieval religious textbooks[1], from a store of cold bottled water, using a total of about 5 litres. Simply pour over oneself with a small jug, 3 times over the head, and a couple times over the right and left shoulder, thoroughly rubbing with one's hand over the entire body after each pour. Though cold, it was extremely and thoroughly refreshing (and different from a simple cold shower). Highly recommend you try it once, the shower-from-a-small-bucket method, that campers and other outdoors people are used to when dealing with limited supplies of cold water. After it was over, I remember thinking to myself, this isn't too bad, I could live like this if I had to. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghusl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghusl

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neonate 4y ago
Your fortitude is admirable. Please stay safe.

Tade0 4y ago

There are plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick before we get to reducing showering, one instance being home insulation. Meanwhile in places with district heating water is commonly heated via combined heat and power plants, making the carbon point somewhat moot. Of course in a fully-renewable scenario there would be no steam plant to provide heat, but here's where nuclear enters the picture. As for water: food has orders of magnitude higher water requirements. Granted, it's not the same standard, but at the same time you can't just pour whatever on your crops. Some treatment is always required. https://www.eniscuola.net/en/mediateca/water-footprint-of-food/ https://www.eniscuola.net/en/mediateca/water-footprint-of-fo...

downvotetruth 4y ago

> Why Do We Shower? Get itchy fecal matter off behind & not have to mess with aiming bidet wand spraying maybe fecal water outside bowl or mess with a rag with fecal chunks.

choeger 4y ago

The author seems to neglect that heat from the water like the water itself can and should be recycled. Ideally, taking a hot bath or a long shower should just be a different form of heating your apartment or house. The same way your refrigerator or your kettle should contribute to the room temperature. If we then also generate heat with heatpumps or solar power (or both), I don't see any reason to not indulge in long showers.

morsch 4y ago
I guess leaving the water in the tub is an easy way to reclaim the heat, but is there any place where the same is done to shower water (or all waste water) on a large scale? Maybe arctic research stations?
- jhoechtl 4y ago
  The warm bathwater humidity will make your walls moldy!
  - morsch 4y ago
    Or help save additional energy otherwise expended on an air humidifier...
dzhiurgis 4y ago
IMO if you have heat pump water heater, recycling dirty water would be good albeit complex way to reclaim the heat.

throw0101c 4y ago

Recommend the book Beyond Soap, written by a professor and clinical dermatologist, on how we're 'too clean', especially with regards to applying unnecessary chemicals on our skin: > Sensitive skin is one of the most buzzed-about topics in dermatology today. It can be painful, debilitating, and inconvenient. Astonishingly, many of the women and men who suffer from problem skin are unknowingly causing it by washing too frequently and using too many skincare and beauty products. Often, we slather ourselves in creams and balms that can actually damage the skin. The miracle products we buy at department stores, specialty shops, and pharmacies have the potential to make us less attractive and prematurely age our skin. > In Beyond Soap, leading dermatologist Dr. Skotnicki explains that the best state for skin is the natural state. On its own, the skin is better equipped to fight wrinkles, stave off aging and act as armor that protects the body from infection. Every time we slather, spread, hydrate, or soften the skin, we nudge the skin away from its healthiest natural condition. Skotnicki demystifies the claims of commonly used beauty products and offers a common-sense approach to cleansing the body along with her product-elimination diet that has helped thousands of patients suffering from a wide array of skin conditions, and a skincare regime that will help you maintain skin health, fight aging, and keep your skin reaction-free forever. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35733533-beyond-soap https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35733533-beyond-soap * https://drsandyskotnicki.com/dr-sandy-skotnicki/ https://drsandyskotnicki.com/dr-sandy-skotnicki/

causi 4y ago
her product-elimination diet Surely you perceive how full of shit that sounds.
- tbran 4y ago
  I read the book (judging by your low-effort snark, you did not) and found it quite useful. For those that like to read, the book has quite a few ways to reduce and change your hygiene regimen and figure out if you're having reactions to certain products. A bit dry, but definitely made me want to switch to soaps/shampoos/etc with minimal scents and additives.
- wincy 4y ago

hahamrfunnyguy 4y ago

I do a lot to reduce my carbon footprint already, so giving up my daily 5-10 minute hot shower is going to be towards the end of my list when it comes to reducing further. Living in the North East US, we have plenty of water here and shortages have never been an issue. If we can stop growing water-hungry crops in the desert there will be plenty of water to go around. Moving to hybrid solar/electric or solar/gas water heating is the next logical step. Direct solar heating of water works very well.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Mist showers would need to use distilled water to prevent lung damage from breathing in hard water minerals. This is why thermal humidifiers can be air-safer than ultrasonic humidifiers (unless using distilled water).

wincy 4y ago
I got rid of all of my ultrasonic humidifiers for this reason. Ultrasonic throws up all sorts of PM2.5 particles which are bad to breathe in. Boiling your water has no such potentially dangerous drawbacks.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Venta humidifiers are a good alternative as well.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Is there risk of parasites too? FWIW it's not unlikely you'll breathe in some when using normal shower too, but mist certainly more concerning.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
>Mist showers would need to use distilled water to prevent lung damage from breathing in hard water minerals. Unless you have a source for this, it sounds like some strong "programmer medicine". The lungs have cilia, mucus, and leukocytes that can remove impressive amounts of contaminants (like coal dust or tar from smoking) before it starts becoming a problem, so it's hard to believe hard water mist for less than an hour per day poses any risk. Your showerhead/water being contaminated with Legionella would though.

jasonhansel 4y ago

> Each day, many of us pour roughly 70 litres of hot water over our bodies in order to be “clean”. That seems like an odd use of scare quotes. Is the implication that showers don't actually clean you?

dghughes 4y ago

> Heating 76.5 litres of water (8.9 minutes x 8.6 litres per minute) from 18 to 38 degrees Celsius requires 2.1 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. In late September this year 2022 my region was hit by a hurricane. My power mine was off for 10 days. Of all the things that I missed it was my daily shower. I have a butane camp stove and used it to heat water it's actually very good much better than my electric stove. I also bought a 3kW generator and an electric kettle. My plan was on day 8 to have a bath so I filled the tub just a bit to save on effort. And then I heated water in a pot on the stove and in the kettle. I did that over and over many times but I could only get the water from 13C to 20C in an hour and a half. I just sat in the water and had a "bird bath" but even that was incredibly cold to the point my muscles ached. From that experience I can certainly appreciate the amount of energy it takes to heat up even a small amount of water.

hackrnusr 4y ago

Many people find long hot showers relaxing. Mental health is more important than conserving "scarce resources" like water and energy. The ocean is literally full of water. The sun is very bright. Research will eventually help us make better use of these "scarce resources" without burning (gasp!) any fossil fuels. Until then, I'm going to continue enjoying my 20-minute daily routine. But thanks for caring.

armatav 4y ago
Exactly. Neurotic people trying to impose their rules on people to reinforce their own energy-apocalypse ideology. Split the atom.
codingrightnow 4y ago
I am seeing way too many of these odd comments. If you're not interested in reducing your carbon footprint right now by reducing the energy necessary to pump, clean, and heat your bathing water you can keep that to yourself. Did you read the article? It's not trying to guilt trip you yet you react as if you've been personally attacked. This article is probably more for people like me who feel guilty showering daily due the relative lack of necessity compared to the environmental impact. Green energy isn't carbon neutral, just better than the alternatives and doesn't have a net zero impact. If you're saying we shouldn't worry about our energy production's environmental impact because eventually fusion will become reality, there is a long mean-time where our personal choices are still disruptive to the environment. I'd gladly introduce this type of system if I can do so with a reliable commercial product or a diy I could figure out. So this article is for people like me, people who'd also rather not have to wade through negative comments and actually get to the useful ones faster.

deleted 4y ago

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armatav 4y ago

No thanks - I think I’ll stick with my three hour power shower at maximum heat.