water-wise gadget: can you take a 5-minute shower?

I can. When I use my 5-minute shower timer.

I got this Shower Coach from my city, at an event related to water conservation. It’s great.

• I stuck it to the shower wall with the suction cup.
• I flip the sand timer when I start my shower.
• Keep an eye on the time as I shower. Even with my poor near-sighted vision, I can see the sand slipping down.
• Finish up in 5 minutes… or as close as I can get.

I’m more conscious of my showering time now, because I have a tool that’s easy to use.  Sure, sometimes I go over, but I’m also more likely to move things along because I know the gallons are running down the drain.

Every minute makes a difference.

My shower flows at 2 gallons per minute (gpm)*. If I shorten my shower by 1 minute every day, I save 730 gallons/year.  2 minutes = 1460 gallons/year saved. But what does 1460 gallons mean?

• About 32 full baths (@45 gallons per bath)
• Or 32 car washes at a professional car wash (@ 45 gallons per wash)

Or, 1.5 years worth of water for an average user in Mozambique.

Average water use ranges from 200–300 litres [52-78 gallons] a person a day in most countries in Europe to 575 [150 gallons] in the United States. Residents of Phoenix, Arizona, a desert city with some of the greenest lawns in the United States, use more than 1,000 litres [260 gallons] a day. By contrast, average use in countries such as Mozambique is less than 10 litres [2.6 gallons]. (Source: 2006 United Nations Human Development Report)

Next time you’re enjoying your shower, think about what a 1 or 2 minute difference can make. According to some studies, the average American’s shower takes 7-8 minutes, so getting to the five-minute mark isn’t such a stretch for most. (Except for teens who, as most parents of teens probably know, tend to take longer.)

Try a Shower Coach, or something like it (Shorter Shower Timer), or even a kitchen timer. And see if you can take a 5 minute shower.

* If you have a high-flow showerhead–over 2.5 gpm–you can make a huge impact without even having to shorten your showers. Just change your showerhead to a low-flow. You could go from a wasteful waterfall of 5 gpm to a more reasonable 2.5 gpm and have a lovely shower and reduce your shower water usage 50%.

could you wear the same dress for one year?

Sheena Matheiken is! 1 dress. 365 days. But then she has a strong creative sense of fashion, and an apparently bottomless collection of accessories in her closet to make it work.

Not only is this a creative experiment and inspiration, The Uniform Project is also a good-cause fundraiser.

Starting May 2009, I have pledged to wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. Here’s how it works: There are 7 identical dresses, one for each day of the week. Every day I will reinvent the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which will be vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies. Think of it as wearing a daily uniform with enough creative license to make it look like I just crawled out of the Marquis de Sade’s boudoir.

The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India. At the end of the year, all contributions will go toward Akanksha’s School Project to fund uniforms and other educational expenses for slum children in India.

By the way, the dress can be worn forward and backward, and open like a coat. I wonder how it’s going to work for her in the hot humid New York summers.  Anyway, for me, it’s time to think beyond clothing swaps for sustainable dressing; gotta accessorize!

Food, Inc. movie opens Friday (watch trailer)

Food, Inc., a new documentary about the US food supply opens today in NY, SF and LA. I wonder if it has anything new to say to those of us who have already read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food Nation and are committed to sustainable (as possible) eating?

I guess there’s only one way to find out:

tetra pak: good or bad?

Every time I finish a box of soymilk, I sigh. Because I have to put it in the landfill-bound trash.

But, according to this analysis of the sustainability of tetra pak,

All in all, Tetra Pak figures that its packaging has a smaller carbon footprint than polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high density polyethylene (HDPE) or glass. A 32-ounce beverage container made by Tetra Pak represents 126 kg of CO2, while glass packaging for the same size drink represents 238 kg CO2, according to the company (and backed up, it says, by third party tests).

OK, fine. But then, as the article points out–and as most of us who don’t have the option to recycle these juice/milk/broth/soup containers–what about the landfill factor? The containers, in the US, mostly end up in landfill. Even if they are recycled, what are they recycled into, since they are “74 percent paper, with aluminum (the liner) and low density polyethylene film (the lid) accounting for the rest”?

So, good or bad? Maybe the question should be reworded: “More good or less bad?” What do you think?

kids after my creative-reuse heart

Alexandra Lehrer, 5, and her classmates at Beginnings Nursery School in New York are my kind of people!

“I like building stuff,” she said. “If you throw everything away, there will be just a big pile of garbage, and you won’t have anything to make collages with.” (From the New York Times, Where One Man’s Trash Is Preschoolers’ Art Material.)

This is all about Everyday Sustainable, since these kids are learning to create fun and beauty from everyday things. I think we adults can take some learnings from this, and fortunately, we are.

Proof: this past weekend’s Maker Faire.

home green home (house cleaning)

The Seventh Generation newsletter recently shared this news about a new healthy house-cleaning service:

We recently launched a new and innovative partnership to help you maintain a clean and healthy home called Home Green Home. We are working with our good friends at Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) to launch an environmentally-friendly residential cleaning service in San Francisco. WAGES’ mission is to build worker-owned green businesses that create healthy, dignified jobs for low-income women. It’s a model that literally transforms the lives of these women, moving them from poverty to business ownership. It’s not your average cleaning service; it’s a unique business partnership, fully owned and operated by the women who do the cleaning. It’s a novel approach to a familiar profession, and one that you can feel proud to support.

I love this kind of service, which provides a win on all fronts: residents, workers and healthy product suppliers. Of course, if you don’t live in the SF Bay Area, there might be similar cleaning companies in your own area. Or how about supporting your cleaning company to go green? And if you clean yourself, environmentally-friendly products yourself.

On the commercial property cleaning front, Russ Goldin of Eat My Dust Janitorial told me that his company focuses on creating healthy environments, for office tenants and cleaners.

Eat My Dust™ is committed to using an environmentally friendly, high performance, science-based cleaning system that has been tested and refined by some of the best companies in the world.  This system is (OS1)®.  It was developed as a set of beyond compliance processes for operating a cleaning organization at the highest level.  (OS1)® is a standardized, measured, audited and tested process that is also 100% sustainable for the environment and the cleaning worker.

when was the last time you vacuumed your refrigerator?

NEVER, probably.

At least that was true for me until recently, when I cleaned the heat-exchange condenser coils, which are what cool your refrigerator by releasing heat. If the coils are covered in a blanket of dust, the refrigerator has to work harder. You’ll hear the motor kicking on often and for a long time.

Refrigerators are already the greatest electricity consumer in most households (about 15%), so it helps to make them as efficient as possible. The Consumer Energy Center says, “brushing or vacuuming the coils can improve efficiency by as much as 30 percent.”

I dare you to look at the coils on your fridge. (They’re likely underneath the fridge, so you don’t have to pull it out.)

Here’s what I found:

Gross, you can barely see the coils.

And here’s the result after vacuuming.

You can actually see the coils now. It still needs a scrubbing with a brush, but better than before.

These are the steps I took to address the dust bunny disaster on the refrigerator coils:

• Find the coils. They are either behind or under the refrigerator. The ones on my fridge are underneath.
• Unplug your fridge.
• Take off the front grate, if it’s underneath. I washed the grate with soapy water. (See this video for how to.)
• Vacuum. You may need a brusher, too.  (See this video for how to.)
• Reinstall the cover. It’s easier to do with the fridge door open.  (See this video for how to.)
• Plug in the fridge.

In this video, the speaker shows the kind of coils I have, and also explains that cleaning the coils might help address persistent allergies from mold/mildew.

How often? At least once an year. More often, especially if you have pets with hair.

Google, please map my bike route!

Getting directions the old-fashioned way.

SIGN THIS PETITION if you, too, want Google Maps to add a “Bike There” option to their maps. 47,000 people already have. I wonder how may they need to be convinced? Or maybe they’re already working on it…?  I’m excited about the possibility of bikeable Google Maps, since I’m committed to riding my bike as much and as safely (in other words, as Everyday Sustainable) as possible.

According to a group that’s advocating for this, a University of British Columbia research group in Vancouver couldn’t wait. If you live in Vancouver, check it out! (And let us know how it works.)

I don’t live in Vancouver, so I’ll have to keep waiting. However, I do live only a few miles from the Google mothership, so I hope that bodes well for an early rollout.

cities -> economies of scale -> greener

Really enjoyed this New York Times column on Math and the City which uses mathematics to connect cities with organisms; i.e., cities are living things. 

I especially liked this paragraph that describes how city size affects things like infrastructure, specifically gas stations.

For instance, if one city is 10 times as populous as another one, does it need 10 times as many gas stations? No. Bigger cities have more gas stations than smaller ones (of course), but not nearly in direct proportion to their size. The number of gas stations grows only in proportion to the 0.77 power of population. The crucial thing is that 0.77 is less than 1. This implies that the bigger a city is, the fewer gas stations it has per person. Put simply, bigger cities enjoy economies of scale. In this sense, bigger is greener. [Emphasis is mine.]

This supports my unfiltered response to the question I hear since moving from the city (”So how’s suburban living?”): I miss the density.

10% water use reduction: what does that mean?

Here in drought-reality California, we’re being told to reduce our water usage, voluntarily. I’m all for water conservation, but what does a 10% reduction look like?

My household of two uses 145 gallons per day*, so 10% means 14.5 gallons per day, which is equal to, daily:

• 9 toilet flushes (at 1.6 gallons/flush)
• 7 minute shower (at 2 gallons per minute–gpm–showerhead)
• 5 minutes using the faucet without an aerator (at 2.8 gpm)

We could flush less (not OK with some household members), take shorter showers (we’re trying), and replace the aerator (the faucet piece is stuck!) But the biggest water hog is the yard. About 50% of household water usage (for homes with a yard, I assume) is for the yard/garden. I’m growing a veggie garden, so the water usage will definitely go up during the spring/summer. Here are steps I will take to make the most of water usage:

• Monitor the front lawn watering. It’s on a timer now; I’ll check the condition of the lawn to see if it’s too much. I’ll also see if I can adjust the sprinkler to water less in the shade.
• I notice water run-off onto the sidewalk and driveway. I need to adjust the heads. Hopefully I can follow this video and make an easy adjustment: adjusting a pop up sprinkler.
• Set up the drip system for the veggies.

What can you do in your own yard to minimize water waste?

More resources: adjusting sprinkler system, tune up your irrigation system

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* This is how I calculated my water usage in gallons, from my bill. I think most bills give you the CCF (100 cubic feet) unit.

• Water usage on last bill = 6 CCF for 31 days
• One CCF = 748.5 gallons
• 6 CCF x 748.5 gallons = 4,491 gallons
• 4,491 gallons / 31 days = 145 gallons/day