Week 1

     
Week 1

      So the first week went, in short, alright. The first day I forgot that I had to take a 7 min shower until it had already been 10 min, so that was a failure. But on the bright side, I also didn't get to take the bus to school because I had "woken up too late", according to my mom, so two things went wrong on the first day! The rest of the week I completed my task of taking a 7 min shower, I even accounted for the time it took me to get in the shower. Although I wasn't able to take the bus home at all this week, I don't think it was that detrimental to my actual carbon footprint because my mom and I drive the same way to and I don't weigh 250 pounds.
     But how much am I saving with my endeavors? The difference now is that my mom drives me to school every day but our routes are not very different so the difference in my carbon footprint would be negligible. In addition to taking the bus I am reducing my showers to 7 min. Since I take a shower everyday for about 15 min this would half the carbon I’m producing. Since, generally, water comes out of a shower head at 2.1 gallons per min(1), and a month of doing that comes out to 441 gallons per month. On average, treating and supplying water uses about 5,875 kWh/MG(2), and using the EPA Greenhouse Gas calculator(3) I am able to calculate that, in terms of the shower, I will be able to cut my carbon waste, in metric tons, from 0.00385783569 to 0.00180032332 per month. This is a 72% difference per month in my carbon emissions from taking showers. Taking a shorter shower greatly reduces my carbon emission due to the energy required to pump and filter the water to get to my shower head. Using less water when showering also has the added benefit of conserving water in a time when there are a lot of droughts and climate changes happening.
Footnotes:
1:https://www.home-water-works.org/indoor-use/showers
2:http://leansixsigmaenvironment.org/index.php/how-much-impact-does-one-gallon-of-water-in-your-home-or-business-have-on-the-environment/
3:https://www.epa.gov/energy#results

Comments

  1. aisha hassanDecember 17, 2018 at 10:29 AM

    i learned that using less water when showering can help prevent droughts and climate change from happening.

    ReplyDelete

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