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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the read-this-while-having-a-nice,-hot-cup-of-tea dept.

Phys.org:

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:18AM (5 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:18AM (#800008) Journal

    apparently it's standard to shower daily in some cultures, whether or not people are actually dirty.

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:57AM (2 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:57AM (#800029) Journal

    Also, stop using shampoo [biome.com.au]

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:29PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:29PM (#800038) Homepage
      "at least 6 weeks" seems like wishful thinking. I didn't properly reach steady state until about 6 months of no poo, even if the difficult hump was passed after about 2-3 months. I'd been stretching intervals out before then for a year before-hand too, I went in prepared. (But was still a bit squicked by the state after 2 months, it required some perseverence, and the knowledge that it would fix itself eventually.)
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    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:13PM (#800140)

      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)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:10PM (#800035) Homepage
    Dandruff isn't flaking of dry skin. Dandruff is (a fungal infection evidenced by) clumping of skin that then fails to flake off naturally (in almost invisible pieces), so eventually sloughs off in big pieces that are very visible.

    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).
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:48PM (#800129)

      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.