Author Archives: seb5741

Can Decreasing Shower Time Really Make a Big Impact?

It is often said that if everyone consciously reduced their shower times by three minutes than an enormous amount of water could be saved. This claim interested me and I decided to delve further into this assertion. Because the average US shower takes 8.2 minutes, according to the EPA, I’ve decided to compare the difference in water use between 8.2 minute showers and 5.2 minute showers (the US average reduced by three minutes)

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According to Home Water Works, a project of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, the average US shower takes 8.2 minutes, uses 17.2 gallons and has a flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute. Furthermore, as stated on the Atlantic’s website, the average American showers six times a week. This means that 5,366 gallons are used per year per person in the United States from eight minute showers:

\[6 \text{ times a week}\times 17.2\text{ gallons} = 103 \text{ gallons used weekly per person}\]

\[ 103 \text{ gallons}\times 52 \text{ weeks in a year} = 5366\text{ gallons used per year per person} \]

If everyone reduced their shower time by three minutes and showered for five minutes instead of eight than 3,407 gallons would be used per year per person in the United States:

\[2.1 \text{ gallons per minute} \times 5.2\text{ minutes} = 10.92\text{ gallons} \]

\[10.92 \text{ gallons} \times 6\text{ showers per day} = 65.52\text{ gallons weekly}\]

\[65.52\text{ gallons weekly} \times 52\text{ weeks in a year} = 3407\text{ gallons}\]

Therefore the decrease in water which would result from this nation wide three minute reduction is 37%:

\[3407 \text{ gallons in five minutes} / 5366\text{ gallons in eight minutes} = 63 percent\]

\[100\text{ percent} – 63\text{ percent} = 37\text{ percent}\]

Now this seems like a significant decrease in water usage, but just how significant in terms of the amount of total water in the world. To determine this, you have to look at the percentage of total water used for domestic use and the percent amount of domestic water used for showering. According to the class notes from the first unit, ten percent of the total worldwide amount of water is used for domestic purposes and seventeen percent of water used for domestic purposes is used for showering. Therefore showering accounts for only 1.7 % of total water used in the US (if you apply worldwide averages to US averages):

.1 used for domestic purposes x .17 domestic water used for showering = .017 or 1.7 percent

After multiplying 1.7 percent by the 37 percent reduction calculated earlier, you get an overall .63 percent reduction of water if every American reduced shower times by three minutes. This seems like a very small percent reduction in the scheme of things. However, when reading this percent reduction in terms of gallons of water, the effects of shower time reduction seem much larger.

As stated in my older posts, there are 320,000,000 people living in the United States.

\[320\text{ mil people}\times 5366\text{ gallons in 8 min} = 1700000000000\text{ gallons}\]

\[320\text{ mil people}\times3407\text{ gallons in 5 min} = 1,090,000,000,000\text{ gallons}\]

\[1700000000000\text{ gallons} – 1000000000\text{ gallons} = 610000000000\text{ gallons saved per year}\]

610,000,000,000 gallons of water saved is a huge impact, especially for such a small action as reducing showers by three minutes. Although I was initially skeptical about the claims that three minutes of shower reduction time could save a lot of water, I know realize that these claims are true. Simple changes are all it takes to make a difference in the lives of others. shower-timerTemp

Tap Water Pitcher Filters Better Alternative

Following off my previous blog on wasted water and plastic bottles, I decided to dedicate this blog to discussing an alternative to plastic disposable water bottles: water filter pitchers.

Most people who purchase disposable water bottles do so because they perceive it to be cleaner and safer than tap water. This, however, is not the case.  While public water is monitored and regulated by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), bottled water is regulated by the FDA (Food and Drug Association). The EPA requires multiple daily tests for bacteria and makes results available to the public. Meanwhile, the FDA treats bottled water as a food or unit of consumption and only requires weekly testing and does not share its findings with the EPA or the public (Ban the Bottle)

Furthermore, according to a 1999 study conducted by the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), out of 1,000 bottled water samples from 103 brands tested, one-third contained contaminants that exceeded FDA-mandated levels (Green America). What is even more surprising is that the NRDC found that one-fourth of bottled water is actually just tap water, with or without extra filtration, labeled “from a municipal source” (Green America). The majority of bottled water is no cleaner, let alone different than municipal tap water.

Keeping this in mind, filtered tap water is an appropriate and effective alternative to bottled tap water. If every family in the US purchased one water filter pitcher, an enormous amount of water bottles and therefore water could be saved. To calculate the exact increments of potential water and water bottle reduction, I had to figure out how many filters would be used if every US family bought one, and how much water could be saved cumulatively from sed filters.

According to Worldometers, an online source which measures populations by country from 1950 until now, there are 324,556,065 people in the U.S. currently (Worldometers).  There are also an average of 2.54 people per US family (Statista).  To determine how many water filter pitchers would be needed to accommodate all of the families in the US, I completed the following calculation:

\[32,456,065\text{ people} /2.54\text{ people per family} = 128,000,000\text{ water filters}\]

The same Ban the Bottle website cited above also stated that one water filter can replace as much as 300 standard 16.9-ounce bottles (Ban the Bottle).

\[128,000,000\text{ water filters} \times 300\text{ water bottles replaced per filter} = 38,000,000,000\text{ bottles}\]

Referring back to my previous blog, it takes 3 liters of water to produce one 1 liter bottle, meaning that 2 liters of water are wasted for every 1 liter of water produced. That means that with the 38,000,000,000 bottles of water replaced by filters, 76,000,000,000 liters of water would be saved.

This is an extremely high number for just one country, and given the lack of clean water worldwide and the need for water efficiency, the transition from bottled water to filtered tap water could make a big impact.

Although not all US families can afford water filter pitchers, they are a lot more affordable in the long term than disposable plastic water bottles. Furthermore, if even half the US families bought and used 1 water filter, 19,200,000,000 plastic water bottles could be replaced and 57,600,000,000 liters could be saved. Of course this is in the most ideal situation, however filters are a way more efficient use of water than plastic bottles.

 

 

Wasted Water

The idea for this blog came to me when my friend and I were working out at Rec Hall. Before beginning cardio we stopped to refill our water bottles, mine a reusable water bottle and my friend’s a used plastic disposable water bottle. As we filled our water bottles we counted with the machine to see how many disposable plastic water bottles we saved and discovered that mine saved four and hers saved three. This confused me since the hydration station said that my friend saved three plastic disposable water bottles when she simply just filled up one used disposable bottle.

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To solve this problem I decided to research plastic water bottles and water efficiency and conservation and concluded that this issue was to vast to be simply covered by one blog post. Therefore I will be using multiple blog posts to reveal my findings and calculations, the first
of which I will dedicate to the actual waste associated with the use of plastic water bottles.

To start this investigation off, I went online to Penn Sate’s sustainability website and discovered that it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water (Penn State). This explains why my friend’s water bottle saved three plastic bottles when she refilled it. On the same website I read that in 2006 Americans alone bought 30 billion plastic water bottles (Penn State). Using these findings, I calculated that in 2006 Americans wasted 60 billion liters of water by consuming 30 billion plastic water bottles:

\(3 \text{ liters of water used per bottle}\times 30 \text{ billion plastic water} = 90\text{ billion liters of water}\)

90 billion liters of water used to make plastic water bottles – 30 billion liters of water actually in the 30 billion plastic water bottles = 60 billion liters of wasted water due to the production of plastic bottles in 2006

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These findings are repulsive since Americans waste double the amount of water to just bottle water that is less regulated than regular tap water. However, these numbers are even more disturbing when compared to the fact that one billion people world wide do not have access to clean drinking water, as supported by the same Penn State website.

To find out how many liters of water are necessary per day per person I found a report entitled, Water Requirements, Impinging Factors, and Recommended Intakes which said that the minimum water requirements per person per day are between 3 to 6 liters (Grandjean, World Health Organization). For this blog, I am going to use 3 liters since that is the bare minimum. So to calculate how many liters of water are needed for a billion of people to survive I did the following:

\[3 \text{ liters a day per person}\times 1 \text{ billion people} = 3 \text{ billion liters per day}\]

With the 60 billion liters of water wasted in America in 2006 to make plastic bottles, one billion people could have been supported for 20 days:

\[60 \text{ billion liters of water} / 3\text{ billion liters of water per one billion people per day} = 20 \text{ days}\]

Although this number may seem insignificant compared to the 365 days in one year, this figure was from 2006 and just included water bottles bought in America. Today the amount of plastic water bottle consumption has increased even more throughout the world. It is important that citizens take other people and countries into consideration when purchasing unnecessary disposable plastic water bottles. In my next blog I will discuss alternatives to bottled water to help conserve and manage water more efficiently,

 

Deforestation Causes Mass Accumulation of Carbon Dioxide

Deforestation has been a huge problem in just the last 50 years as the global population continues to expand and more and more resources are needed to support this increase in population. The negative effects which arise from deforestation include loss of habitat for animals, loss of aesthetic beauty, loss of natural resources, and perhaps the most devastating effect, an increase in air pollution. Because CO2 is sequestered at high amounts by trees, the cutting down of millions and millions of hectares of forests annually increases the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. On the American Forests website, I found the following calculation which measures the amount of C02 sequestered per acre of forest:

1 ton of carbon = 3.666 tons of CO2

This represents the weight of carbon dioxide (44) divided by the atomic mass of carbon (12). Next, it is estimated that one acre of trees stores 50.8 metric tons of carbon, so…

50.8 metric tons of carbon X 3.666 tons of CO2 = ~186 metric tons of CO2 per acre of forest

Since we don’t use metric tons as a common measurement in the U.S., we next need to convert tons to pounds:

1 metric ton = 2204.62262 pounds

and

186 metric tons X 2204.62262 pounds = ~410,060 pounds of CO2 sequestered per acre of trees

Furthermore, according to Conserve Energy Future which posted up facts about deforestation from 2015, one and a half acres of forest are cut down every second. To find out how many tons of CO2 are left in the atmosphere per year from deforestation, I did the following calculation:

1.5 acres/sec X 60 sec/min X 60 min/hr X 24 hr/day X 365 day/yr = 47,304,000 acres/yr

That means 47,304,000 acres of forest are lost every year due to deforestation. Now because 410,060 pounds of CO2 are sequestered per acre of trees that means that:

410,060 lbs of CO2/acre X 47,304,000 acres/yr = 19,397,478,240,000 lbs of CO2/year

Or that 19,397,478,240,000 lbs of CO2 are left in the atmosphere due to deforestation. Now to convert that to metric units:

1 metric ton = 2204.62262 pounds

19,397,478,240,000 lbs of CO2/yr / 2204.62262 lbs/ton = 8,797,042,285 tons/yr

With roughly 9 billion tons of CO being left in our atmosphere due to deforestation, it is safe to say that we need to drastically decrease the amount of annual deforestation if we wish to continue to survive on this Earth. This high level of CO2 will only continue to increase and negatively effect the greenhouse effect and alter our planets temperatures and ozone.

http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/various-deforestation-facts.php