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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: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:23AM (4 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:23AM (#800011) Journal

    Use Mother dirt [vice.com]

    "Why does my horse roll around in its own filth all day?"

    It was a pretty weird question to be asked on a date, but it ended up changing David Whitlock's life. That was 12 years ago, and Whitlock hasn't bathed since.

    Driven by the burning ambition to find an answer to his date's question, the chemist, who is now 60 years old, got to work: After doing some research, Whitlock found out that horses rub living bacteria into their skin to protect the flora living there.

    Whitlock gathered some of these good bacteria, which neutralize dangerous organisms and hazardous substances on the skin, and made them into a spray that he's been using since for his daily hygiene. Among other things, it breaks down ammonia: the compound that makes human sweat stink in the first place.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by knarf on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:53AM (2 children)

    by knarf (2042) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:53AM (#800027)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:50PM (#800063)

      Redpill me on dandruff shampoo, senpai.

    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:03PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:03PM (#800317)

      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

    by patrick (3990) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:21PM (#800118)

    From the same article:

    The greatest and most amazing change is that I'm always in a good mood now. Aside from that, I haven't collected any data in order to evaluate it. Of course my skin is also very soft and in a good condition, but it always was actually.

    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].