Green Tip #101: Let it Rain

Alright! The moment you've been waiting months for! After all this time, the final results of the Tournament are here! I know that you've all been reading intently over these past few weeks as I posted daily matchups, some of which went on for over 10 pages. I'm amazed that you would stick it out so faithfully and now you're here to find out the final results.

But before I reveal the big winner, I want to remember some of the best matches. Remember last Tuesday when-

Hey, wait... What's that orange button that says "Publish Post" at the bottom of my page supposed to mean? Oh.... wait, I think that I've been writing hundreds of pages of Tournament matches and not publishing any of them... Sorry about that...

Haha, no, I'm just kidding. I haven't been writing any posts because my heart has not been in it. Let's face it, the Tournament was probably a bad idea. It wasn't as funny and witty as the Green Tips that you've come to expect. So I'm starting over. I'm going to be less structured, more entertaining. I don't think I'm going to get on a fixed schedule yet, but we'll see once I get back on track.

Green Tip #101. I almost thought you'd never come. I actually thought of you before I even posted Green Tip #100, but I never got a chance to bring you to life.

A lot of hippies will tell you to not use your shower and instead take soap and shampoo (not much if your hair is short) outside when it rains and this can be used to cut down on your water consumption. I would also recommend that you do this, but not because it will save water.

No, I want you to shower in the rain so every time you try to clean yourself and you feel that distinct burning feeling all over your skin, you will remember how painful acid rain is and how bad it is for the environment. Every burning rash that develops will serve as a reminder to write your politician and tell them to do something about acid rain. And if you are a politician, remember that you can try this new showering practice, just remember not to strip naked in public places. After all, that's over 75% of political scandals start...

Green Tip #81: More on Shower Use

I feel like I'm almost getting to the point where I'm afraid I'm micromanaging your life. I feel like a good portion of these Green Tips have been about how you should shower and how often you should do it. Thinking back, I've already posted three tips about how you should (or should not) shower or whether you should pee in the shower or not.

Green Tip #19
Green Tip #24
Green Tip #42

Well, I'm not done yet. If you choose to ignore the first one and still continue to take showers, this tip is for you. I was washing my sheets the other day and I realized that my pillowcase had gotten quite dirty. "Eureka!" I thought. "Here's an opportunity for a Green Tip! What if I only took showers at night! Because then my hair would be clean while I'm sleeping and I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning my pillowcase as often!"

But then I woke up the next morning and realized that my good idea was maybe not the best idea. If I didn't take a shower in the morning, I would just end up being too dirty and getting my clothes so gross that I'd have to wash them more often. And that would put me back where I started.

So just as I do all the time on here, I've come up with a compromise. Take two showers a day! I know that sounds counter-productive, but if you take two half showers a day, it comes out to one full shower. So Green Tip #81 is to wash your hair at night and wash your body in the morning. That will save you from washing your clothes and from washing your pillowcase more than you have to!

So have fun and try to keep all those rules straight if you can!

Green Tip #42: Short Hair

Okay, you're about to read something that's never been done before. I am going to use math to prove why one fashion style is the best one. After you read this, you'd better make an appointment at your barber shop, because everyone's going to be rushing out to follow this hot new trend.

As you can tell from the title, I'm about to show you the benefits of having short hair. It's about to get all mathematical in the here, so hold on to your logarithms.

Okay, so my first assumption is that there is a linear relationship between the length of the person's hair and the amount of shampoo that they use. Now, there are several factors that interact with this (gender, age, socio-economic status, etc.) but within each demographic subgroup of the population, I feel confident making this assumption. Also, it may stop being linear beyond certain extremes, such as when a person has really really short hair or really really long hair. In the tail ends of the hair length distribution, the relationship may be more exponential or perhaps logarithmic.

That being said, I can further conclude that a person with half the hair length will use half the volume of shampoo. Again, there are complicating factors to this, such as a person with short hair will wash their hair less often, and therefore use less than half of the volume of shampoo, but we'll ignore that for this calculation. If anything, this assumption will only make my conclusions less conclusive, so if I can prove the environmental benefits with this assumption in place, I can say that the conclusions will hold even more so when this assumption is removed.

Now let's gather some figures. According to a case study done by the Boston Consulting Group, the average US household uses 19.5 bottles of shampoo per year. That's 19.5 20 oz. bottles, or 390 oz. per household. And, according to the 2007 US Census Bureau report, there are approximately 111,162,259 households. That means the US uses 43,353,281,010 oz. of shampoo per year. That comes out to 338,697,508 gallons of shampoo per year. And according to an article on Newsweek, up to 80 % of shampoo is water. That means the US shampoo industry uses about 270,958,000 gallons of water per year. That's roughly the amount of water that one person uses in 9279 years.

What if we were able to cut that in half? Think of all the water we'd save! How do we do that, you might ask? Well, Green Tip #42 is this: Cut Your Hair Length in Half. Yes, I know this means short hair will be popular among women because of this, but I should put the needs of the environment before my personal preferences.

Also, I didn't factor in the amount of conditioner or anything like that. Also, we'll save electricity by cutting down on hair dryer use. But that's just icing on the cake when it comes to how much water will be saved.

Now, there are two notable exceptions to this rule. Bald people, there's nothing you can really do to help the cause here. Kudos on being ahead of the game though. Just make sure you keep that head wax use to a minimum. And hippies, I understand you like your long hair. But odds are you either have dreadlocks (Nasty, but Saves Water!) or you just simply don't shower. Either way, you can ignore the above Green Tip. I think you've done enough for the environment.

Green Tip #19: Cut Down On Shower Use

Hey everyone, sorry for the somewhat late posting of your Green Tip for today. Actually, if it weren't for a bookcase that I dropped on my ankle, I'd still be up moving furniture around instead of resting my ankle by sitting and typing this post.

So you're probably a little taken aback by the title of this Green Tip. I mean, "Cut Down On Shower Use"?? Really? That's so.... generic. You're probably thinking that I've finally run out of ideas. Well, not really. Let me explain.

This Green Tip is not about cutting down on water use like the title would imply. Well not directly anyway. No, I want you to think for a while about what the consequences of following this would imply. If you were to never take a shower, yes, you'd be saving countless gallons of water, but you'd also be making yourself really really smelly. And what do smelly people have a hard time doing? Finding boyfriends and girlfriends, of course. (Sorry, smelly people, but you have to know it's true.) And one thing that people who don't have boyfriends and girlfriends tend not to do is to have children.

Now, I know it's built into most of our DNA that we want to pass on our genetic material to our children, but for the sake of the planet, we should think about not having any kids. The population will shrink back to manageable levels where we won't be strained for resources and therefore we won't be worried about animal species going extinct and having to cut down rain forests to build Targets and such.

So please, if you can't keep your hormones in check (don't worry, you can't) I'd suggest taking the temptation out of the equation and stop taking showers.