Earth Week 2012

Photo courtesy of earthday2012.com

It's Earth Week this week, did you know? I can't say I've heard anyone else mention it, I only know because my company has been encouraging us to make pledges committing to change our behavior this week in ways that will help to reduce consumption and benefit the environment.  Things like drinking water out of recyclable containers and not plastic bottles, commuting to work, eating only "wasteless" lunches and/or eating vegetarian, making a donation to a "green" cause, only printing emails if you absolutely have to, turning off unnecessary lighting.  Several of these things I already do on a regular basis and some things, like commuting, are technically doable but would be overly impractical for my lifestyle.

As a result, I have chosen to take shorter showers for the week.  That means showering for no more than five minutes each day.  I don't think I shower for too much longer than this anyway, although I am guessing my average time is at least 7 or 8 minutes (I didn't measure it before the challenge started, so I'll need to wait until next week to test my actual time).  Still, I did notice a difference this morning.  I used the stopwatch on my iPod and jumped out of the shower to hit the stop button, finishing with a whopping 24 seconds to spare.  Which is good to know, because I did feel a bit rushed.  I also used too much shampoo and knew I was wasting precious time and water rinsing the excess out of my hair, so will try to monitor that tomorrow.

I think Katrina noticed the difference too. She likes to sit between the shower liner and the decorative fabric curtain and play with the drops of water as they run down the plastic. There's a hole in the plastic and she gets rather wet sometimes, but she looooves being rubbed down with a towel afterwards.  Silly cat, she is such a water baby.  She seemed a little upset that play time was shortened this morning, but I think she'll be fine about it overall.

However, I do believe that 5 minute showers do not allow time for things like shaving your legs so I won't be doing that for the next 4 days.  Is that too much information? Maybe, but it's true.  I do not have to experiment to know that using a razor on your legs is not something you want to rush.

Shorter showers for 5 days supposedly means 380L of water saved.  That's got to be a good thing.

So what are YOU doing for Earth Week?