https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/05/11/cold-water-laundry-shower-dishes
Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time – Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions.
By Allyson Chiu – Allyson Chiu is a reporter focusing on climate solutions for The Washington Post.
Excerpts: You may not be giving a second thought to setting your washing machine on the hot cycle, cranking your showers to a steamy temperature or scrubbing your dirty dishes under a stream of scalding water. … While there are home improvements that can help you cut back on the energy it takes to heat water, including installing a heat pump water heater, one easy solution is to switch to cold water.
…
Washing with cold water can reduce your energy footprint even more. By washing four out of five loads of laundry in cold water, you could cut 864 pounds of CO2 emissions in a year, an amount equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. forest, according to the American Cleaning Institute.
…
Bathing
Showering accounts for roughly 17 percent of the water Americans use in their homes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Your steamy showers also consume energy: Nearly half of a home’s hot water is used for bathing. A cold shower uses less energy than a hot one.
Jennifer Amann, senior fellow in the buildings program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit group, said letting the tap run while you’re waiting for water to heat up results in water waste. She suggested that people think about how to minimize that.
“If you’re wasting cold water to get your hot water, then you’re really wasting both water and the energy resources,” she said. “Those energy resources still come largely from fossil fuels, and so they’re adding to emissions in the environment at a time when we really need to be doing everything we can to reduce carbon emissions.”
You should also rethink washing your hands with hot or warm water for the same reason, she added.
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When they say the world has too many people, I tell them, “You first” Same thing in this case.
I’ll stick with hot showers, …and etc.
Birthrates are dropping worldwide as infant and childhood mortality drops and families recognize that most of their children are surviving.
You should embrace using cold water to… wash that hair shirt
Using that same logic, you should…
Cook in cold ovens (because gas causes global warming)
Heat your house with ambient outdoor temperature (because ditto)
When people wash their cars in their driveways , they need to be in bathing suits or completely nude so that they can wash themselves first, then use the leftover water on their vehicles and finally use the whatever’s left on their lawns and gardens. That way it would be a win-win-win situation that’s would go a long way to save the planet as well.
I’m not sure my neighbours would appreciate the view of me in that state. 😁
Maybe we should take communal baths, like the Romans. That would be efficient. /s
only if the water is heated by the local volcano…
I have a circulating water pump/loop on my hot water, so water from hot faucets and shower heads is hot within a few seconds, although I do have the pump on a timer to turn it off between about 10 PM and 5 AM just to save a little energy consumption as we don’t tend to take showers in that period.
In any case, I’d suggest that Allyson can wash and rinse her hair in the toilet bowl and kill two birds with one flush.
Scissor,
I have that same loop in my house, but no timing mechanism. (Mine is gravity operated, with no pump.)
What are you utilizing for your timer function?
Quite right. Heating is bad. So only cold and raw food from now on.
What happened to the advice during COVID to wash your hands in warm water because it killed germs better than cold water.
That was as big a pile of BS as the 6 foot distancing, paper masks, lockdowns, curfews, and the worst of the gaslighting, “safe and effective”. Water, hot, warm, or cold, does not kill bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Used in conjunction with soap (otherwise it is a worthless rinse), it emulsifies microorganisms and allows water of any temperature to carry them away from our skin. The “medical experts” who told us otherwise do not have any medical knowledge and are not experts, except perhaps in spreading propaganda.
When I took my servsafe certification a couple years ago, it said to use the hottest water you could tolerate (not exactly those words, but that was the clear meaning). I just checked and it now says “warm”.
Dish washing is supposed to be done with 110F or higher, even if using antibacterial soap – and the third sink is a sanitizer anyway, but still requires 110F.
I recall my father, who was a WW2 Navy vet, had us kids put on bathing suits and wash up underneath an overhang during a downpour/thunderstorm. We thought it was fun. Of course it was summer and we lived out in the country.
One of my brothers was the original pig pen. The shower only had cold water – hot was in a bucket from the kettle. Sunday mornings Dad scrubbed and Steve hollered under the cold shower. (The Dad sewed on missing buttons from his flies before ‘Meeting”.
I served in an active military force. We rarely had hot water for a shower, mainly taken at 4am summer or winter with no protection from the wind chill. I can attest to the ability to have a full wash and rinse off in less than 20 seconds. Recovery took much longer.
This silly journalist should undertake a 12-month monitored pilot program.
I don’t know if anyone here remembers, but WUWT ran this same story just a week ago.
On my PC that story is displayed under “Related” at the end of the post and before the comments.
Nonsense then. Still nonsense now.
(Not sure how this “copy/paste” will work.)
“If everyone took cold showers that would also reduce the population.
Reply
Scarecrow Repair
Reply to
Gunga Din
May 14, 2024 6:45 pm
You mean shrink the population….”
I remembered.
However, some things are so stupid, that they deserve to be exposed more than once!
Everything that was said then, still applies.
Do YOU wash in cold water? In Central Victoria in winter !
I bet you think the whole idea is as moronic as everyone thinks it is…. so why not say so !!
actually I live in sw vic and YES I do wash cold water year round, its not like the old days when you had to scrub/hand wring so its the machine feels cold(ha) not me, and warm or cold wash,you still get a chill hanging it out in winter
I meant showering, or washing ones-self.
My washing machine also only uses cold water
Slow news week.
Recycling also uses a lot of energy to heat the hot water needed to rinse out cans and other items such as milk containers before they can be accepted in the recycling bin.
Maybe we should instead be putting our empty tins of dog & cat food into our shower tubs along with ourselves and turn on the cold water up to force 11?
Then we’ll need a fire hose to clean down our bathrooms.
Am I complicating the recycling process?
Steptoe and Son – The Bath
Is there a version of this available with subtitles in English? 🙂
Sorry, I don’t think so.
But another on the same theme (3 mins )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIztKyOz9zk&t=2s
If I could just get this planet to warm enough, then I do not need to heat the water!
WIN-WIN!
I first read about this in last month’s Yurt Living Magazine (the special Urban Chicken and You issue).
A cold shower never hurt anybody.
Following James Bond, as invented by Ian Fleming, I always finish my shower with a cold run.
Gets the endorphins racing. Puts the gin back in your tonic.
Try it!
And it freezes your brain.
(Man, you must take a cold shower every 15 minutes 🙂 )
“A cold shower never hurt anybody.”
Stick with the good tech comments, and encourage regular aerobic activity instead.. Given the demographics of the folks here, there’s a 10.283% +/- 3.154% (2 sigma) chance that at least one of our cherished fellow commenters will tic out because of the shock of that cold flush.
I defer to the Gorman’s to assess the influence of unknown, Big Foot sources of systemic error that will bias my estimate and invalidate my treatment of significant figures.
Just one shower, hot or cold… would help everyone around you…. a lot !!
Fungal hasn’t made a good tech post in the whole time it has been here.
If showering gives you a “Cold Flush” stop bathing in the toilet!
I agree. Here’s a list of the benefits of taking a cold shower.
1. Reduces inflammation and swelling.
2. Reduces chronic pain in joints and muscle soreness.
3. Boosts your immune system.
4. Promotes overall improved health.
5. Improves metabolism and healthy weight loss.
6. Improves insulin sensitivity and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
7. Helps fight symptoms of depression.
https://www.healthline.com/health/cold-shower-benefits#takeaway
https://www.vogue.com/article/cold-shower-benefits
uh uh cold water makes my RA crippling painful plus lose feeling in hands just washing them in cold water, even handling frozen goods will whiten fingers(yes syndromes assoc with RA not uncommon) cant use a cold pack for injury either
between crypto, surveillance, and AI that is one very busy electron
Take cold showers? No! Make more electricity!
Yes, that could be a break-though solution.
(Too obvious for most governments though 🙁 )
Why?
Water heaters should be set at 60°C 140°F to prevent legionella.
But I like legionella, it leaves a tangy tingle on the tip of your tongue! (kidding!)
And your lungs!
The class I’m currently taking when covering Fire Safety community outreach said 120F, to avoid scalding.
Don’t you love conflicting information?
I don’t know why she feels the need to bathe at all. No one would want to get within smelling distance of someone so thoroughly unpleasant.
If they’re so keen on cold water, fine, but I’ll wash my hands and shower as I always have.
Humans evolved in the Tropics, so they like warm water. Leave the cold water to the polar bears.
“You should also rethink washing your hands with hot or warm water for the same reason, she added.”
My surgeon better use hot water and lots of it.
Come on Allyson – You can do better than that.
Why shower at all? I mean a monthly bath with water heated by renewable firewood or a dip in the river is all you really need. Worked just fine in the 1700s.
/s
The basic motivation of these kinds of people is a self-loathing of themselves and their country. It’s like immature teenagers hating their parents … but liberals are people that never grew up.