SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the read-this-while-having-a-nice,-hot-cup-of-tea dept.
When you hear about businesses with a high environmental impact or activities with a high carbon footprint, you are probably more likely to imagine heavy machinery, engines and oil rather than hairdressing. Yet hairdressing, both as a sector and as an individual activity, can have a massive carbon footprint.
Hairdressing uses high levels of hot water, energy and chemicals. Similarly, in our homes, heating hot water is typically the most energy intensive activity. For the cost of a ten-minute shower that uses an electric immersion heater, you could leave a typical television on for 20 hours.
So while it helps to turn lights and appliances off, the real gains in terms of reducing energy usage are in slashing our use of hot water. A quarter of UK emissions are residential and, of those, the vast majority come from running hot water. The longer it runs and the hotter it is, the more energy intensive (and costly) it is.
Mostly the hot water used carries a high carbon footprint, but the chemicals in shampoo don't help either.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:00AM (23 children)
apparently it's standard to shower daily in some cultures, whether or not people are actually dirty.
it's ok to wash every two days or once a week, depending on how much you sweat and how much of your skin is exposed (to accumulate dust etc).
do change your socks as often as possible, as well as underwear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:07AM (3 children)
Fewer showers. Take fewer showers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:33AM
I'm sorry. mai bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:28PM
Fewer showers. HAVE fewer showers.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:49PM
How about "lesser showers", meaning shorter, or somehow using less water?
For the record I use a water-saving efficient shower head with a valve that I shut mostly off when soaping / scrubbing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:15AM (5 children)
Be really environmentally friendly: have a sand bath
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:23AM (4 children)
Use Mother dirt [vice.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by knarf on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:53AM (2 children)
There's another soluti8on to the problem of body odour: stop using commercial deodorants, make your own using baking soda/potato starch/cocos fat (plenty of recipes to be found online). Strangely enough commercial deodorants seem to mask the smell for about a day after which it returns - or even emerges - with a vengeance, necessitating the use of... more commercial deodorants. It is almost as if the stuff is engineered to work that way. I recently got reminded of this when I staid over at my parents' for a week to help them with a building project. While there I used my father's commercial deodorant with the stated result, deodorant-smelly for a day followed by smelly-smelly. This was weird as I'm normally not smelly at all while I maybe use the home-brew baking-soda/starch/fat concoction once a week if it is that often. It wasn't related to physical activity either, I'm more active at home (logging, tending the farm, building, throwing my children across the room etc) than I was there in suburbia.
The conclusion is that commercial deodorants, just like commercial anti-dandruff shampoo is not designed to solve those problems. It is designed to get you hooked to using the stuff in perpetuity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:50PM
Redpill me on dandruff shampoo, senpai.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:03PM
For me, every day is different. For sure tangible stress causes stink, but some days it happens for no apparent reason. Physical work doesn't cause much stink (the sharp kind). Keeping underarm hair trimmed helps a lot. Some days I don't use deodorants and have no stink. Some days I use deodorants and they work, and I have several different brands going at once. Some days one brand works and another seems to make things worse. No clue why- so many variables.
Years ago I was using every anti-dandruff shampoo there was, including ones with tar (I do NOT like that head tingling feeling). It turned out that I didn't need that stuff- I must NOT ever use any kind of conditioner, body-building, enriching, protein, "energizing", etc. Just pure cleansing/clarifying, 2 - 3 washes (oily hair), and I'm good to go.
Once when changing automatic transmission oil I didn't realize some had dripped and I rolled my head into the puddle. I was horrified, but I used standard dish detergent as shampoo- it was awesome.
(Score: 2) by patrick on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:21PM
From the same article:
I'd be genuinely interested if someone has conducted independent studies. There may be something of merit there. Unfortunately, all of this (and others I've seen) are simple arguments from ignorance [rationalwiki.org].
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:18AM (5 children)
The more frequent you wash your hair, the more chances you'll develop dandruff.
Skin and hair have a slightly acidic reaction (that fat the skin secretes? Mostly fatty acids or esters oh them), soap and shampoo are neutral or slightly basic => washing too frequent and you'll dry the skin and it will flake easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:57AM (2 children)
Also, stop using shampoo [biome.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:29PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:13PM
But using real poo doesn't exactly make your hair more clean!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:10PM (1 child)
At this point perhaps I should chip in that I haven't used shampoo or any soap/detergent product on my (old-school metaller length) hair since August 2017. All washing is done just with plain water. And it's never felt better, except when it's actually wet. I can't claim my procedures are eco-friendly, my hair-washing is part of my twice-weekly sauna regime, which at 9.5kW for up to 4 hours is probably a metric fuckton of carbon footprint, making the showers in TFA seem like toy money (the sauna being accompanied by half a dozen mini showers too, of course, though most of them will be pretty cold).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:48PM
I've been thinking about building a (Finnish) sauna, and trying to decide what kind of heater to use is the hardest part. Electric is convenient, but uses alot of energy. Wood require work to make fuel or money to buy. Gas requires expensive and dangerous infrastucture.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:23AM (2 children)
How often people shower, in various countries [theatlantic.com] I am surprised - if you believe this, nowhere do people shower less than 5 times per week. Not sure I believe it, either - it doesn't fit with my experience in Europe, where I would have thought 3-4 times per week was more typical.
Obviously, one needs to shower after sports, or after actually getting dirty. But for your typical office worker, if you have decent deodorant? Daily is not really necessary. As I've gotten older, I find that showering daily is bad for my skin - obviously a personal thing, but probably not atypical.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:37AM
The confusion is that shower != bath. And the less shower people are actually more bath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:17PM
Save the environment: Avoid sports! :-)
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:20PM
At one time (UK) showers were only found in sports changing rooms, and normal houses (built pre-1970ish) only had a bath, which people typically took once a week. Then there was a campaign by the water companies to get people to shower "because it uses less water than a bath". But that assumed people would only shower once a week, but people found showers more handy and thus the current culture of daily (or more) showers was kick-started.
But even that assumed that a shower uses less water than a bath. I have a 7yo nephew who spends 30+minutes in the shower. My boss's teen daughter would take so long in the shower that one day he timed her (going by the noise, from outside the door!) and later returned to experiment, directing the shower head into the bath. He found it filled the bath to the overflow outlet one-and-a-half times.
Personally I hate getting wet, and hate showers because I have less control over them than a bath. They also swing betwen scalding and freezing in my experience. I bath in about 4" of water, once a week. But some idiot one day will ban baths on the die-hard assumption that showers use less water.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:49PM
I bet there's four superimposed graphs going into the signal:
1) bell curve certainly includes people who shower more than once a day, I lift weights about three times per week and often do physical "stuff" at least once a week outside the gym so maybe a dozen quick showers a week for me. So me, plus some hikki guy who showers once a month average out to an average that has nothing to do with anyones lifestyle.
2) If I'm overheated from yardwork / exercise / hot weather I'll sometimes take a cool shower. I wonder if turning the AC up a degree ends up using more energy on average when factoring in extra showers. Likewise it doesn't help or cure sunburn, but if you get a sunburn, then at least for a few minutes you'll feel better under cool shower water.
3) For youth its a private place for self pleasure. So whats the lifetime cost of a separate bedroom and lotion vs bunk beds and long "showers" ?
4) Much like TV viewing or social media addiction is a power law there are likely OCD people taking 15 showers a day which boosts the average of an entire subdivision by a measurable amount although its really only one mentally ill person.
The super imposed total graph must be interesting, probably not a boring bell curve.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:23PM (1 child)
Instead of taking less showers, share the resources, shower with your significant other.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:38PM
And how is showering with imaginary people supposed to save resources? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.