APES Project Reducing Environmental Footprint

This second week has been great. I showered exactly for 10 minutes, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Was it hard or has there been time where I just don't care and decided to give up? No. To be honest, it was pretty easy to shower for 10 minutes. Why? It's because I used to do my thinking in the shower, now I do my thinking outside of shower. You might be confuse on what I just said but it's fine, me too. But if the project ended today, I would most likely continued to do this project because taking shorter show is not that bad.  (or maybe I will turn into taking bath :)))) and plus by taking shorter shower, I'm saving the earth by limiting the amount of fresh water use. This habit of taking shorter that I'm trying to develop is actually pretty easy to maintain. But how long does it really take before I'm comfortable doing it on a regular basis? According to How Long it Really Takes to Build a New Habit , on average, it takes a person an a...

Reflection on the 1st week Honestly, my first week of showering for 10 minutes went better than expected. Why? I was sick for the whole entire week. In my family, if you're sick, you're not allowed to shower. I don't know if this applies to every Asian family, but in my family, we believe that showering when you're sick will make you even sicker. So... I saved a total of 84 gallons this week. So where did I get this number from? If you read my first blog post...., then you will know that the average flow rate of a shower is about 2.1 gallons per minutes (Homewaterworks). And In this project, I shower for 10 minutes a day, 4 days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) so 10 minutes * 4 days a week = 40 minutes a week. 40 minutes * 2.1 gallons = 84 gallons a week. But because I haven't shower this week, I have saved an extra total of 84 gallons. This extra 84 is the number of gallons I saved by not doing this proj...

I choose to take shorter showers because I often take really long shower that can last for 20 minutes. My shower is that long because I like to be in the water and it just really warm in the shower. Unlike me, my family take really short shower because they have a lots of things to do. I’m the only with that problem. “The average American shower uses 17.2 gallons (65.1 liters) and lasts for 8.2 minutes at average flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute”  ( Homewaterworks ) . This is a lot less compare to the amount of water I use. If 2.1 gallons are pour out per minutes and I shower for 20 minutes, then the amount of water I use per shower is 42 gallons. And there are 365 days (I shower everyday) in a year which is a total of 15,330 gallons gallons of water I used in a year (basically 16x32 pool with a 4 ft depth) . This is a lot! I need to lower this number! To do this, I will cut my showering time by half and limited to the number of time I shower I shower in a week. What that mea...