My second week went just as well as my first week did. I continued to take shortened, colder showers around six minutes long with half heat on the dial every night during the week. During this week I saved another 145 gallons of water and used half as much energy as I normally would have heating only half as much water as I did before to half the heat I was taking showers at before this project. If I continue this habit for thirty days I will save 560 gallons of water. If I continue my new shorter shower habit for a year I will save around 6720 gallons of water! That's quite a bit! If everyone at the summit took 5 minutes off of their normal showering time as a group we could save 56,000 gallons of water in just one week. Not to mention the monetary savings if they took colder showers than normal which require less energy to heat and produce fewer greenhouse gasses. Since everyone's plumbing and heating systems are different the overall amount saved could vary but...
Over winter break I stuck to my impact goal for the most part. However, I was in Eastern Washington where it was very cold most days so the allure of long hot showers got to me twice. I ended up taking two hot showers around 10 minutes each. I was able to negate this impact by skipping showers on the days where my family and I drove back and forth from Wenatchee. After reading this article that HB provided to us I asked some of my friends to try and shorten their showers too. I did this by telling them how much water they could save and providing structural motivation from the article. If I was to advertise my impact methods to the general public I would cite this article's methods by simplifying the methods of what they have to do down to just shortening their showers and cooling them off. Then I would tell them all the benefits of this simple undertaking. I will most likely continue this habit in the future as it has become part of my daily routine and has good benefits f...