Good Hygiene is Bad for the Environment

[Virgil Showlion]

Think about it. What percentage of our energy/resource consumption is directly attributable to our hygienic practices?

We shower every day (some people twice a day), pumping huge quantities of water over vast distances, cleaning it, heating it, storing it. Our shelves are stocked with endless hygienic products: soaps, toiletries, and toothpastes; cleansers, lotions, and air fresheners. We guzzle energy, water, and hydrocarbon-based products with our weekly (sometimes daily) vacuuming, dish washing, clothes washing/drying, pet scrubbing, and other hygienic rituals.

Our foods are individually wrapped in mountains of paper, cardboard, aluminum, and polymer. We throw away vast quantities of food based on the most trivial contamination. Steak falls on the floor? Can't wash it off. That's got to go into the garbage. Somebody touched that coffee lid at Starbucks? Better chuck it into the garbage just to be safe. Beetle crawled over that slice of pizza? There might be beetle poo! Into the garbage.

I'll tell you: when I got married, my carbon footprint shot up 300% overnight. Sheet washing: from "once per two months" to "once per week". Underwear: from "wear 'em a week or until they smell" to "wear 'em once". Peeing down the drain in the shower: from "Honestly, even in the fantastically unlikely probability that a drop of urine splashes somewhere it isn't instantly washed away, it's going to compromise our health?" to "I won't do it again, honey.". Microwave: from "yeah, so there's some specks of food in there" to "the roof of our microwave is now cleared to perform surgery".

And I can go on. Mrs. Virgil singlehandedly transformed me into a water-guzzling, resource-sucking, energy-burning, bottles-upon-bottles-of-hygienic-products-piling-up-in-the-recycling-bin monster. And she putatively cares more about the environment than I do.

If you think about it, hygiene is nothing more than protecting ourselves from the environment. We're doing war with the environment with our hygienic obsessions.

All you hygiene-happy ladies (I'm sure there are at least a few hygiene-happy gentlemen out there too, but it's got to be at least 8:1) think about that. Think about global warming!

[Opti]

Decided not to shower today and you want an attaboy since you were green?

[Virgil Showlion]

Apr 30, 2015 8:40:16 GMT -5 Opti said:

Decided not to shower today and you want an attaboy since you were green?

Nope. I shower every day I'm headed out. If I plan on staying in or just going out for brief walks, errands, etc., I may or may not shower.

Showering used to be a one-every-two-days thing in my bachelor years, though.

[NancysSummerSip]

Apr 30, 2015 8:40:16 GMT -5 Opti said:

Decided not to shower today and you want an attaboy since you were green?

Um, that green is due to mold.

[wvugurl26]

Sheet washing is weekly due to allergies. Showering daily for the same reason to rinse the pollen off. Vacuuming and dusting for allergies too as is using the ac all the time.

[Tennesseer]

There is something to be said for allowing algae to grow on the backs of sloths. It offers camoflauge while living in the trees, offers a source of nutrition to sloths young and old, and a breeding place for moths..

[NancysSummerSip]

Apr 30, 2015 9:36:14 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

There is something to be said for allowing algae to grow on the backs of sloths. It offers camoflauge while living in the trees, offers a source of nutrition to sloths young and old, and a breeding place for moths..

So that makes Virgil a sloth and a slob?

[Opti]

Apr 30, 2015 9:36:04 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

Sheet washing is weekly due to allergies. Showering daily for the same reason to rinse the pollen off. Vacuuming and dusting for allergies too as is using the ac all the time.

Pollen season is in full swing here already. Do you think showering twice a day during pollen season would

help? I was taught to do sheet washing every week although I know some people go every two weeks and Oprah every 3 days.

Vacuum and dust daily? Curious, because both make my allergies worse for awhile, but not doing often enough hurts as well.

[Opti]

Underwear: from "wear 'em a week or until they smell" to "wear 'em once"

Well, that does explain why some men's underwear gets so nasty.

[Deleted]

I should feel ashamed but sheet washing is usually when a cat barfs on the bed. Or when I feel motivated, which sadly is not very often. Although, maybe I will wash them today. Nobody has barfed there lately but still...

And I ran out of clean underwear so I REALLY need to do laundry. Or go shopping at Target.

[wyouser]

Apr 30, 2015 8:36:23 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Think about it. What percentage of our energy/resource consumption is directly attributable to our hygienic practices?

We shower every day (some people twice a day), pumping huge quantities of water over vast distances, cleaning it, heating it, storing it. Our shelves are stocked with endless hygienic products: soaps, toiletries, and toothpastes; cleansers, lotions, and air fresheners. We guzzle energy, water, and hydrocarbon-based products with our weekly (sometimes daily) vacuuming, dish washing, clothes washing/drying, pet scrubbing, and other hygienic rituals.

Our foods are individually wrapped in mountains of paper, cardboard, aluminum, and polymer. We throw away vast quantities of food based on the most trivial contamination. Steak falls on the floor? Can't wash it off. That's got to go into the garbage. Somebody touched that coffee lid at Starbucks? Better chuck it into the garbage just to be safe. Beetle crawled over that slice of pizza? There might be beetle poo! Into the garbage.

I'll tell you: when I got married, my carbon footprint shot up 300% overnight. Sheet washing: from "once per two months" to "once per week". Underwear: from "wear 'em a week or until they smell" to "wear 'em once". Peeing down the drain in the shower: from "Honestly, even in the fantastically unlikely probability that a drop of urine splashes somewhere it isn't instantly washed away, it's going to compromise our health?" to "I won't do it again, honey.". Microwave: from "yeah, so there's some specks of food in there" to "the roof of our microwave is now cleared to perform surgery".

And I can go on. Mrs. Virgil singlehandedly transformed me into a water-guzzling, resource-sucking, energy-burning, bottles-upon-bottles-of-hygienic-products-piling-up-in-the-recycling-bin monster. And she putatively cares more about the environment than I do.

If you think about it, hygiene is nothing more than protecting ourselves from the environment. We're doing war with the environment with our hygienic obsessions.

All you hygiene-happy ladies (I'm sure there are at least a few hygiene-happy gentlemen out there too, but it's got to be at least 8:1) think about that. Think about global warming!

Isn't it amazing the power of just two little words!  Bet you had no idea of what you set in motion when you said: "I Do"

[Opti]

I think you are letting Virgil off the hook. He probably chose to say two little words after he got married.

I will.

Yes honey I will shower every day.

Yes honey I will change my underwear every day.

...

He didn't have to. If he really cared about global warming he'd be sayin I won't.

[Virgil Showlion]

Apr 30, 2015 10:45:34 GMT -5 Opti said:

I think you are letting Virgil off the hook. He probably chose to say two little words after he got married.

I will.

Yes honey I will shower every day.

Yes honey I will change my underwear every day.

...

He didn't have to. If he really cared about global warming he'd be sayin I won't.

No blowing my nose in my napkin. No scratching the plaque off my cheeks and eating it at the dinner table. No grody long fingernails. No scratching my boys in public.

What? We're having dinner with the Queen of England?

[phil5185]

Think about it. What percentage of our energy/resource consumption is directly attributable to our hygienic practices?

We shower every day (some people twice a day), pumping huge quantities of water over vast distances, cleaning it, heating it, storing it. Our shelves are stocked with endless hygienic products: soaps, toiletries, and toothpastes; cleansers, lotions, and air fresheners. We guzzle energy, water, and hydrocarbon-based products with our weekly (sometimes daily) vacuuming, dish washing, clothes washing/drying, pet scrubbing, and other hygienic rituals.

Our foods are individually wrapped in mountains of paper, cardboard, aluminum, and polymer. We throw away vast quantities of food based on the most trivial contamination. Steak falls on the floor? Can't wash it off. That's got to go into the garbage. Somebody touched that coffee lid at Starbucks? Better chuck it into the garbage just to be safe. Beetle crawled over that slice of pizza? There might be beetle poo! Into the garbage.

I often think of the changes since I was a kid when I hear the younger folks trying to be 'green' - the blue barrel for recycling, paper/plastic/neither, yada.
During WW2 we didn't have running water in the house. We carried pails from the well. Had an out-house. On bath-day, we put a metal wash-tub in the center of the kitchen, Mom heated kettles/pans/coffee pots of water on the wood stove, and poured it into the tub. After our bathes, they carried the tub outside and poured the water in the snow. We used lard and lye to make the soap, cut the bars kinda like 'brownies' to make a dozen or more bars.

To my recollection we didn't have a waste basket. Plastic hadn't been invented, we carried our groceries home in a wooden box. The goods were bulk, not wrapped - except flour & sugar, they were bagged. (and rationed).  We used baking soda for brushing teeth. no paper products - no Klennex, no rolls of Bounty, cloth was used. Obviously we conserved water usage, it wasn't fun to carry 2 pails of water down the path, through the snow. cold, wind, in the dark, lol. And closet-space wasn't the issue that it is today - Dad hung both pairs of overalls on a nail in the back porch, Mom's dresses fit on a 2 or 3 wire hangers and hung on the bdrm wall - the sunday shoes and the everyday shoes were on the floor. Didn't really need a closet.
The people who had newspapers/magazines, bundled them, along with empty (flattened) tin cans and took them to town for the "war effort".

And now, every week, we roll a blue barrel and a black barrel out to the street - amazing, I don't even see how that much stuff gets into our house!!

[Opti]

Phil part of your experience includes how wealthy your family was not just the times. You can just watch Mr. Selfridge and Downton Abbey on PBS to see some people before you were born also bought soap and likely conserved less water.

Hankies used to be used, but its now considered gross or too much work, much like diapers.

But then, there is always the family towel.

[ken a.k.a OMK]

I remember the 60's, "shower with a friend."

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

Apr 30, 2015 13:44:35 GMT -5 ken a.k.a OMK said:

I remember the 60's, "shower with a friend."

I don't think the hippies @ Woodstock followed that mantra. The purple haze that was wafting in the air that week wasn't just coming from the marijuana smoke.

[resolution]

A rain water catchment system off your roof would take care of most of your issues.

[The Captain]

I'm learning waaaayyy more about some peeps here than I want to.

TMI overload.  Just saying...

[wyouser]

Now that I think about it, at -20 degrees F there was never an issue of siblings screaming that so and so was hogging the outhouse. No one tarried about frozen seating  No child was ever chided about flushing something he should not have and clogging the outhouse! As I recall, the only back up issues happened only in warmer weather when an occasional snake decided to move "in" to the outhouse causing a would be outhouse user to back out the outhouse door

[Chocolate Lover]

Apr 30, 2015 9:40:53 GMT -5 Opti said:

Apr 30, 2015 9:36:04 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

Sheet washing is weekly due to allergies. Showering daily for the same reason to rinse the pollen off. Vacuuming and dusting for allergies too as is using the ac all the time.

Pollen season is in full swing here already. Do you think showering twice a day during pollen season would

help? I was taught to do sheet washing every week although I know some people go every two weeks and Oprah every 3 days.

Vacuum and dust daily? Curious, because both make my allergies worse for awhile, but not doing often enough hurts as well.

What kind of vacuum do you have? Most of the bag ones toss around as much dust/pollen as they catch. I never dust so IDK what to recommend there except a wet rag.

[lynnerself]

DH and I do our part by showering together every morning