A Bad Person Trying to Be Better: Waste Less Water
Editor's Note: This is a recurring feature in which comedian and admitted horrible person Alex Blagg documents his attempts at becoming a slightly better individual.
I love water. I think it is a delicious and highly underrated beverage. Not only do I love drinking it, I love bathing in it, swimming in it, even listening to the sound of it.
I am utterly clueless about how much water I actually use in a day, but I'm ashamed to say it is probably a lot. For one thing, I like to take really long showers (because for some reason I seem to be at my most creative while standing naked in a trance-like state while a high-pressure water stream blasts in my face), and I shower constantly, with the fervor of a pathological germaphobe. I leave faucets on while I brush my teeth and wash the dishes. I dirty a kitchenful of dishes to make breakfast. Sometimes I flush toilets for no reason, "just to be safe."
My house basically sounds like Niagra Falls.
The Problem With This:
One-sixth of the Earth's population does not have access to safe drinking water. While the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, those in developing countries struggle to find five. This thing that we take for granted as being free and ubiquitous, is actually one of the planet's most precious resources.
Experts estimate that California (where I live) only has approximately 20 years' worth of clean water left.
How I Tried to Be Better:
As an experiment, to see whether or not my whole life would fall apart if I stopped using up most of the world's water, I tried to cut my usage in half for just one week. To accomplish this, I committed to the following adjustments in my daily routine:
— Cut shower time, from an average of about nine minutes (woah, check out Captain Planet over here!) to a maximum of three.
— Cut back on frequency of showers, from seven per week to five.
— Reuse dishes whenever possible/not a bio-hazardous health risk.
— Brush my teeth with a cup of water to wet/rinse the brush as opposed to letting the faucet run while I carefully scrub each crevice and cranny of my mouth.
— Only flush the toilet when absolutely necessary (as they say, "if it's yellow, let it mellow").
Findings and Observations:
— For one thing, I had no idea how fast showers actually warm up. I was probably giving it a solid two-minute lead time before hopping in, but upon further investigation, discovered that my shower actually reaches an acceptable level of warmth within seconds. Whoops!
— Getting in and out of the shower in under three minutes isn't actually that hard. To speed things up, I found it helpful to imagine that all my Facebook friends were watching me the whole time.
— For the most part, no one seemed to realize I skipped showering on Saturday and Sunday (the weekend seemed like the best time to be filthy). My wife couldn't tell the difference, but that's probably because she thinks I always smell bad. In fact, the only hiccup was when Justin Bieber was doing a book signing at my local Barnes & Noble, and his security team seemed to really give me the stink-eye. But that also could have just been because of my mustache.
— In the midst of my reduced showering, I was encouraged to read an article in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times that suggested the "not bathing much" thing was actually a trend. I feel like I am on the cutting edge!
— I reused a water glass for seven straight days, and it continued to taste just fine, like good old flavorless water. I also found that I could use less water while doing the dishes by scraping my plate thoroughly, wiping it with a soapy sponge, then just giving it a quick rinse. So far I haven't died!
— Only flushing in cases of extreme necessity, while a little gross, worked out just fine. As an unexpected bonus, it definitely helped me remember to put the seat down.
Conclusion:
Cutting my water usage in half was actually pretty easy, almost ridiculously so. And even at this new rate of consumption, I'm probably still using too much. So I'm going to try to do even better (because that's what this is all about, right?) by embracing the game-like quality of cutting down my shower time as if it were an Olympic sport, one that is judged by all my Facebook friends.
Also, I'm never drinking Mello Yello ever again.
Alex Blagg is a writer and comedian in Los Angeles. Most recently he created the satirical website BajillionHits.Biz, for which The Daily Beast called him the "Stephen Colbert of New Media". Prior to that, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSN's Wonderwall.com, won two Webby Awards for his work running Vh1's "Best Week Ever" blog, and was included in The Huffington Post's list of "50 Funny People You Should Be Following On Twitter". He is truly a horrible person.
Photo courtesy of j.botter/Creative Commons via Flickr.
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