Products We Like: Evolve Showerheads
It is awfully hard to change learned behavior. Once people get used to do something one way, especially if they do it very regularly, it is hard to get them to change. It is often easier to change the non-human parts of the system than it is to change human behavior.
We’re seeing this a lot with environmental issues. You can tell people driving cars is bad for the environment, but it is difficult to stop them from doing it. Especially in the US, the whole city system is set up for cars. It’s easier to change the cars to be more eco-friendly than it is to get people to stop driving.
And it is just as true for mundane things as well. As John Thackara points out in In the Bubble, it’s not evil corporations ruining the world, it’s us leaving on lights, taking showers, using laptops. But that behavior is hard to change. It’s easier to get fluorescent light bulbs or LEDs than to seldom turn on lights. And now, a solution for showers.
Here’s the process most of us go through with our showers: 1. Turn the water on. 2. Wait for it to get hot. 3. Get in. The problem is that step two wastes a lot of water: two and a half gallons per minute, in fact. Evolve Showerheads partially solves this problem. Rather than have a gusher while the water is hot, their showerheads slow the water to a trickle when the water reaches 95 degrees, thus ensuring very little hot water flows down the drain. According to them, this could “save a yearly average of 2,700 gallons of water, the fossil-fueled energy it takes to heat it—and up to $75 off your utility bill.” Not bad.
Of course, an even more efficient solution is to have the hot water heated up on-the-fly so there is no warming up time at all, as some showers I’ve used in Europe do. But that requires a significant investment in money and effort, not just switching your existing showerhead. For now, this is a decent solution to a eco-problem most of us weren’t really aware of. Small steps towards a better world.
(via Core77)
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4 Comments
Glad you posted that, I’ve been thinking about it every time I step into the shower since seeing the Core77 post.
It seems like a technical solution without enough insight into the behavioral adaptation people go through to deal with this.
Do people simply put on the shower and wait until it’s ready? Maybe they do; I don’t have the data. My solution is usually to put on the hot water and wait til the pipes empty of cold water, and then adjust the temperature with the cold tap to something comfortable. And maybe everyone else has their own workaround (and mental model about where the water is, what is efficient, how it’s heating up, etc.). In terms of eco-whatever, my solution fits my mental model and doesn’t require me to purchase a new piece of plastic (or throw away the old one).
If my solution works as well as theirs, perhaps there is an even more low-impact way to educate, inform, create mental models and give people more control through their actions alone.
You can improve on this fancy showerhead technology with an $8 plastic bucket:
Get a plastic bucket. Keep it in the bathroom. Fill the bucket with the warming water until it’s hot enough to shower with. Use the bucket of water for anything you want, say, flushing the toilet. Zero water wasted.
Speaking of showerheads, the New Zealand based company Methven is pretty innovative in this space.
A few years back they made a strategic decision to incorporate design into their business. They started by doing usability studies of how people shower – the first product from this research was the SaturnJet shower head which not only delivers a much more enjoyable shower experience (by how the water droplets are sprayed from the head) but also uses half the water of a conventional shower.
They are also working on a detachable shower head that you take with you when you travel that has vitamin c inserts to nutralise the chlorine in water that dries your skin.
Not sure if I would personally want to take a shower head on my travels – but an interesting company nonetheless!
http://unlimited.co.nz/unlimited.nsf/default/8D97612DD9787D68CC2574C500706A1C
It’s’ wonderful what you have designed; however, it’s also important that you save the cold water from going down the drain. I was at my daughter’s house which has well water. Her husband didn’t seem to care since he said it only goes back into the earth. Nevertheless, is there a device which also allows a trickle for the cold water until it gets warm? How about a timing device? Water is a very precious commodity. When I hear of some people in the world that are forced to drink disease- infested water because that is all there is, it makes me deeply aware of how I use water where it is so plentiful.