Blue

A couple of recent articles discussing the environmental impact of meat production:

Vegetarian is the new Prius. (Alternet)

Pork’s Dirty Secret (Rolling Stone)

And check out the Unhappy Meals article in the linkblog in the sidebar. A great analysis of where we’ve gone wrong with our Western diet.

My recipe for cutting your shower to two minutes while still enjoying it. This will save a lot of water and help you to feel really good about yourself.

Optional extras:

a. To reduce water consumption: shave your head. No need to shampoo, condition or blow-dry. And no bad-hair days!
b. Purchase a shower timer. Approx $10-15 from your local hardware store.

c. Use a Rinnai Infinity instantaneous gas hot water service. This lets you set the hot water temperature – to the degree – which means that you don’t have to mix hot and cold, nor do you heat the water to 60-70deg and then cool it back down again. Or better yet, get solar hot water.

Now, to the recipe:

1. Set shower timer to 2 minutes.
2. Start timer.
3. Start shower.
4. Wet your body all over.
5. Turn off shower.
6. Pause timer.
7. Use soap or your preferred product to lather and clean all over.
8. Resume timer.
9. Turn on shower.
10. Rinse off.
11. Enjoy remaining 30-60s of luxuriating hot water. If you choose to grow hair, use this time to rinse out the shampoo, then repeat steps 5-10 for conditioner.
12. Turn shower off when timer indicates, or earlier for extra brownie points.

Additional water-saving tips:

• Guys, don’t run the tap while you’re shaving. Just run a little hot water into the basin and use that.
• Everyone, don’t run the tap while you’re brushing your teeth.

I managed to have a fantastic shower while camping recently using a bucket and about 7-8 litres of rainwater, using essentially the steps above.

Next task: to convince lunatic farmers that inland Australia is not an appropriate place to grow rice! Sheesh…