Going Green
Shorter Showers
The Problem to be Solved
The problem I worked on solving was using too much water. Less than 1% of all water on Earth is usable by people. Water we use is a limited resource. With more and more people using the limited supply of water we run the risk of depleting the water. We must use water wisely before it is gone. (Source: http://www.epa.gov/watersense/kids/whysave.html)
Description of Project
My project was to try and conserve water by convincing my family to take shorter showers. First, we all decided to only take showers since this saves water. A bathtub takes 70 gallons of water while a shower takes about 10 to 25 gallons of water. I kept a log of shower times for each person to see if we could take shorter showers. The goal was to try and spend less than 5 minutes in the shower. (Source: http://www.epa.gov/watersense/kids/whysave.html)
Benefits of Shorter Showers
Focusing on taking showers and not baths decreases the use of water significantly. The benefits of a shorter shower are that you save water. You save water because you are using less of our limited water supply. This also saves money. Also, it helps save the environment from pollution because heating your water takes energy which creates pollution.
Renewable Resources
Taking shorter showers reduces our use of fossil fuel which is a non-renewable resource. We use this to heat our water before and during our showers. Heated water is being used in our showers. Our design is decreasing the use of water.
Return on Investment
Taking shorter showers will save you money on your water bill. It will also save you money on your electric or gas bill depending on how you heat your water. This will also help you reduce pollution. Shorter showers will also will improve the environment. There will be more water for other living things.
Results
My data table shows the first five days before we started this project labeled 1 - 5 and you can see showers were much longer. My data table the shows the second five days after we started the this project labeled 6 - 10 and you can see a decrease in shower times. The graph shows the shower times throughout all 10 days. As you can see from the table and graph, our showers did get shorter in length overall. The spike in the graph toward the end for persons 3 and 4 were longer showers after hard sporting activities. We are all now aware of the benefit of shorter showers and will try and keep our showers short to save water and energy and money.