ideas to reduce water and energy consumption (as of 2009)

Next follow some ideas to reduce our consumption of water and energy (written in 2009):

- Reduce the number of hot water showers to the minimum (10min in the shower corresponds to a waste of 200 litres of water!!!), and substitute by cold showers (you may take hot water showers once in a while as a special treat to yourself, hahaha, or when you’re ill, etc.). The benefit is double: 1) I can assure you that your showers will be much shorter (much less water consumed), and 2) a lot of energy is necessary to warm water, so you will reduce your energy consumption very much. For those of you that think you can’t do that, I’ll tell you “yes, you can”. I myself loved super-boiling water showers and did not resist at all cold water. But it is only a matter of getting used to it (the capacity of adaptation of human beings is amazing: think of those people that you’ve seen on the TV having polar bear swims in Siberia, or many people have a grandparent that took cold water showers or that swims in the sea every day of the year). The trick that worked for me was to start taking cold showers during the summer, and then, as I was getting used to it, I saw I could take cold showers earlier in the spring and later in the Autumn, and finally during the winter also. As a collateral benefit, now I can swim in the sea in the winter, too. Cool!

- Minimize the times and time that you open the fridge/freezer. When you must open them, keep them open the shortest possible time. When you need to defrost something, take it from the freezer one day before and leave it inside the fridge, this will reduce the power consumed by the fridge.

- By the way, the TV, fridge, air conditioning, heater, water heater, and drier are the devices of your home that usually consume most of the electrical energy, so you should pay special attention on how you use them.

- Take your showers with a bucket below you/between your legs. After the shower, you can use that water in the bucket that you didn’t waste for flushing the WC, etc.

- If you are not able to take cold showers, and for having hot water you need to leave the water running for a while, put that water in a bucket and use it later for flushing the WC.

- If you have a baby/toddler, use for your bath and/or other purposes the water that you have already used for their bath

- Bring your own containers, bags, tupper-wares, etc., to the supermarket to put there whatever you may buy without packaging

- Pick the thousand paper napkins that they give to you in all bars and restaurants during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and recycle them for others multiple uses in your kitchen, bathroom, etc.

- Try not to use ever hot water in the bathroom and kitchen

- Minimize/eliminate the use of air conditioning and heater

- Avoid flying unless completely essential

- Vote for parties that support transition to green economy

- Forget about bitcoins

- Minimize the data you have uploaded in the cloud

- Fucking train your adaptation capacity to hot and cold, as human’s adaptation capacity is extraordinary but at present day it is atrophied for most people

- Pee with the lights off sitting on the WC ;-)