Does anyone still do that or is that too evil? Granted, the OP was asking about showers, but the lack of discussion about baths, even to condemn them, seemed to imply, at least to me, that it was simply out of the question for environmentally conscious people. The questions the Green Lantern addresses are ones often worth thinking about, especially since it's easy to assume that one way of doing things must automatically be greener when it isn't necessarily so. Debunking those assumptions helps put things into perspective. But sometimes, the specific nature of the questions seems to get in the way of our getting a comprehensive view of what handful of things an ordinary person might do that would have the most impact environmentally. After a while, one starts to feel like one is expected to cut back in every single area of one's life. In reality, most of us are probably more likely to commit to picking a handful of practices that would shrink the footprint the most for the least disruption to our routines.

I'm afraid long showers and baths are too nice for me to give up. It would probably be nicer for the earth if I had a family to share/reuse the water with or if the neighborhood built a public bath, but in the meantime, the only thing I can do is maybe use a bit of the gray water to flush the toilet... and I still want my baths, let alone my long showers. Geez, do I still have to feel bad given that I don't have a lawn to water, don't have a swimming pool, recycle, don't have a car, don't have a TV, ran the A/C only 3 times this year, and line dry half my clothes? Surely I can indulge in a bath now and then?

A daily bath with a good book is my idea of heaven on earth. It would take a mountain of evidence to make me give it up.

Depending on the size of the tub, how full you fill the tub, and the size of you...

So, if you are warming the water in the bath by ~50 degrees F (~105 F), then you would use ~15.4 MJ, or ~4.3 kWhs per bath, divided by your water-heater's efficiency (mine is 0.97, but they can be as low as 0.60). So if you have an efficient heater, you might be responsible for ~4.5 kWh's of energy per bath.

That works out to a responsibility of ~4.5 kg of CO2 if you have an electric water heater, and ~1.2 kg of CO2 if you use a natural gas water heater. Obviously, if you're going to take a lot of baths and long showers, you should use an efficient natural gas water heater... But even if you used an electric water heater your bath would still only equal the impact of driving a typical car ~ 6 miles.

Of course, taking one bath/day with an electric heater would result in ~1.6 tons of CO2/year, which could easily be reduced by half if you took a 5 minute shower/day...

It's not supposed to be about ruining yourself to make small improvements, and there is no standard "good enough" or "not good enough"... It's supposed to be about making choices that you are comfortable with to help the planet. That's always enough.

The rest of the journey will have to be traveled with government help. We need policy to put in more clean energy (so those baths won't hurt the environment as much), and we need to have a legitimate burden ascribed to carbon so that the full cost of the fuel is assigned to the people who make those choices. If the energy costed another 5 cents/kWh, you might still take your baths (at an additional cost of 20 cents/day), or you might not... but someone else might shift to a clothesline - or might not (at an additional cost of ~25 cents/hour of dryer time)...

You won't destroy the environment by taking a bath, but there are - naturally - choices that could be made which would be less damaging... Until the government starts changing the market conditions to advantage the more environmentally concious choices, whatever choices you're making now are clearly sufficient, because we're not doing anything to incentivize you to do more.

(for the record, I envy you your lack of car... I live in the South - where "public transportation" is a dirty word).

At least I think that's what the OP is asking. Even if you take long showers, it just takes more water to fill the tub. Here's an experiment. The next time you shower, put the plug in the tub. See? Easy. It takes the entire contents of the water heater to fill our tub, and I've never run out of hot water in the shower...

MessyONE:

At least I think that's what the OP is asking. Even if you take long showers, it just takes more water to fill the tub. Here's an experiment. The next time you shower, put the plug in the tub. See? Easy. It takes the entire contents of the water heater to fill our tub, and I've never run out of hot water in the shower...

You need to buy a second water heater in parallel with the one you have so you get a larger capacity of hot water before running out. Then you can fill your tub AND take a shower before running out.