Reduce Your Shower Time: A Means of Water Conservation

Our research aims to understand the extent to which reducing shower duration and increasing water conservation efforts can reduce the carbon footprint at UMass Amherst. The residential halls at UMass Amherst consume almost 80 million gallons of water a year contributing almost 12,000 MTCO2 eq. to the atmosphere. Despite UMass’ efforts to increase water conservation on campus beginning in 2007, yearly water consumption in residence has remained constant, which may suggest current conservation efforts are not effective. In a 2018 pilot study, we developed an interactive timer that displays shower duration and cumulative water consumption in order to reduce water waste at UMass. This “active” intervention was placed in multiple residential hall showers for a period of 8 days. Shower durations during that span were compared to a control group where durations were collected during a previous interval and no intervention was present. Through that comparison, we found an astonishing 41% reduction in shower duration. Our current study expands upon this previous work by using various intervention methods, including a similar “active” intervention, as well as a “passive” intervention by means of a poster to determine how much people’s behavior changes with increased awareness. We hypothesize that as awareness increases, shower duration will decrease. Any percent decrease could be used as a multiplier for the amount of water consumption reduced yearly, which can then be extrapolated to the impact of campus carbon emissions through the conversion factors identified. The results will inform UMass Amherst about potential water-saving actions that could best decrease overall water consumption in residential halls to help meet UMass’ goal of carbon neutrality by 2030.