Environmental and Social Aspects of Domestic Bathing - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 201

potential. In this chapter, bathing is considered an example with a past, a present and
a future. To all of these, the engineer, or ingenious person, has contributed, does so
and will do so.

6 Technical Aspects of Bathing

In this section I will consider those technical aspects of water, energy and CO 2 e
(carbon dioxide equivalent, or greenhouse gas) emissions that are common to all
bathing methods. Method-specifi c details will come in Sect. 7 .

6.1 Water

In the USA 'About 17 percent of residential indoor water use goes to showering,
which adds up to more than 1.2 trillion [that is, 1.2 × 10 12 ] gallons of water con-
sumed each year' (Bennett 2008 , p 59). Since 1 US gallon is 3.79 l (National
Physical Laboratory undated, a ) and the US population was estimated to reach 300
million in 2006 (United States Census Bureau 2006 ), this means that the average US
person takes 42 l/day for showering and 244 l/day for all residential indoor use.
Bathing in the USA usually means a shower, although hot tubs, Jacuzzis and similar
bathing facilities are also popular. Further, water use has probably increased a little
since the date of the research, the economic glitch from 2008 notwithstanding.
Using a rounded fi gure, as is appropriate in this hard-to-quantify subject area, I
therefore assume that the US water use for bathing is at least 50 l/day. This is a
national average and the USA is strongly inegalitarian. Many will be using much
more than 50 l/day for bathing and much more than 250 l/day for all residential
indoor use.
There is an enormous disparity between the availability of water to the richest
and poorest individuals. I largely avoid country-by-country comparisons because it
is people as individuals who matter. There are people suffering from multiple depri-
vation in all countries and superrich, profl igate, people in all countries. 'More than
one billion people worldwide can't get the safe, clean water they need' (Practical
Action undated, a ). Further information may be found on the Practical Action docu-
ment pages (Practical Action undated, a ). These statistics reinforce the earlier prop-
osition that humanity must embrace a qualitatively different attitude to its own kind
and to the rest of life and to our planetary home. The signifi cance of the suggestions
made in later sections of this chapter on frugal bathing is intended, not particularly
as exhortations to individuals to behave in a way that, within the existing culture, is
eccentric but rather as experiments to discover some of what may be possible when
deep cultural changes have occurred. The suggestions are intended to liberate think-
ing about change.