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Hey!
Hope you’re having a wonderful Wednesday as you read this! Let’s tie up some loose ends from the past few hair-related blog posts:
1. I ended up shaving. After three weeks of au naturale legs, I hit my threshold. I don’t know how much water you save by shaving once every few weeks instead of every day, but I figure it must be a lot. Even just turning off the water while you shave saves an average of 300 gallons a month.
2. Fellow shower challenge blogger Laura Cuccaro agrees that having shorter hair has made it easier to take shorter showers!: “I’m a huge fan of growing out my hair to donate it. I’ve been doing it for 7+ years now. The only time I’ve ever cut off a significant portion of my hair without donating it was recently over spring break (4″). I felt bad that I didn’t grow it out longer so I could donate it, but it’s definitely made the shower challenge that much easier. :)”
3. Commenter Upiana concurs: “I know just what you’re talking about! For a while now, every two years my sister and I have donated from 10-14 inches. The first shower after the haircut is always weird..I always squeeze out way too much shampoo, but it definitely goes faster!”
Today
I was planning to tell you today how this shower challenge has revolutionized my life (with minimal hyperbole), but you’ll have to come back tomorrow for that! Since I’ve yet again reached the point when I desperately need to do laundry, I decided to return to the topic of water usage and clothing.
Laundry
- Wash your clothes when you have a full load of laundry (although that goes without saying, as I’m fairly certain that no college student ever does laundry more often than is strictly necessary).
- Use the brights cycle. The brights cycle uses cold water, so you save energy.
- Once you’ve finished your bottle of detergent, spring for powdered detergent. Not only is it lighter when you lug your hamper to the laundry room, it also avoids wasting the water that fills bottles of diluted liquid detergent.
Buying clothing
- Be conscious of the fabrics you purchase. Cotton is an incredibly water-intensive crop. In contrast, bamboo and hemp consume less water and need less pesticides. Additionally, bamboo grows at an incredible rate and hemp yields three times more fiber per acre than cotton! But…there are drawbacks. For instance, I have never seen an article of hemp clothing that I have considered remotely attractive. Bamboo is naturally a tough fiber (it’s often used to make flooring and furniture!), so it requires the use of strong solvents to make it soft enough for t-shirts. Do a little research, be an informed consumer, and know which trade-offs you are willing to make.
- With three exams, four papers, a part-time job and interviews to prepare for, maybe you don’t have time to research clothing fiber. In that case, you can avoid generating demand for more solvent-laden, water-intensive and/or ugly fabrics by simply buying vintage!
- Or maybe you have a formal coming up and buying vintage really isn’t your thing. In that case, check out options like Rent the Runway, which lets you rent designer dresses for a fraction of their retail price. If five women rent one dress, they save the water that would otherwise go into producing one dress for each woman. Of course, if Rent the Runway doesn’t work for you, you can always just try raiding your friends’ closets.
- The issue of fabric’s inherent water waste becomes mute should you decide to join the nudist movement.
Today’s shower was 5 minutes (I was trying not to chip my brightly-colored nails…) with the Lemon Thyme Earth Lovers shower gel. Now that the hair-related posts have concluded, expect to see product reviews of the Nutriganics line of face products, the Deodry deodorant, and the all-important Earth Lovers Shower Gels.
Share your best water-saving laundry or clothing advice below, along with your favorite color of nail polish!
Last notes: Enter the Earth Lover’s Three-Minute Shower Challenge to win free stuff! Click here for more info. Follow me @twitter.com/jsongnaps!