Evidence-based Conservation

Does the Waterdrop Reduce Water Usage?

jjacquet — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:21:35 +0000

Does the Waterdrop Reduce Water Usage?

Many of us are aware we have an impact on the planet but, as we know, there is a push to become aware with greater precision. One tool for this is the waterdrop, a shower meter marketed in Britain. Here is the blurb about it at the Ethical Superstore:

Statistics suggest that showering accounts for around one third of the total water used in the home. With each person in the UK using around 150 litres of water a day, this brings into question the accepted notion that showering uses less water than having a bath.

The Eco Showerdrop Shower Meter is an ingenious yet simple device designed to help you keep track of how much water you're using. Easy to install, with no tools required, this is the world's first low-cost, universal shower meter. Just measure how long your shower takes to dispense a litre of water, then the display screen's uncomplicated graphics will help you monitor exactly how much water your shower is dispensing, and a simple alert tells you when the recommended amount (35 litre) has been used.

With this gadget installed in your eco-friendly bathroom not only will you be making savings on your water and energy bills, but each shower will be contributing to cleaning up the planet.

Surveys carried out by Waterwise and the Energy Savings Trust have found that if you follow the advice of the Eco Showerdrop and use only 35 litres of water per shower, a family of four could save over Â£180 on water and energy bills per year. As well as this, you would save over 40,000 litres of water and two thirds of a tonne of carbon.

Does the Waterdrop reduce water use? We know that it adheres somewhat to the principles of an injunctive norm (which we discussed with regards to emoticons and energy use): the waterdrop starts beeping when you use more than 35L. But does it work? The answer is probably yes for some people and no for others.

Enter, again, my friend and former scientist for the UK Energy Saving Trust, which markets a low carbon lifestyle to the British public. I talked about her in my very first post. She had a waterdrop in her shower when I visited her in Britain. Her response:

It doesn't do anything. It's not like you get an electric shock. Nothing happens. The alarm sounds and that's it. I imagined I used 4-5 times as much water as the average person but I actually used 51 L, which is nearly double but not nearly as bad as I thought.

As for me? Well, like most good Americans, I don't like being told what to do. So when it started beeping I stayed in the shower just to defy the waterdrop, which led to me feeling disappointed in myself (after all, what is all this awareness good for?).

jjacquet Mon, 12/07/2009 - 02:21

Tags

Consumed

Eco-Scurriity

Evidence-based Conservation

It's a fine idea, but it seems like something I could do with stuff around the house.

The larger question is: Does the Waterdrop save more water than it takes to produce materials, manufacture, ship, and dispose of when it is no longer wanted. It might raise awareness initially, good I guess, but once the novelty wears off it is another disposable electronic device. Seems to me like once you figure out the water flow rate it is just avoiding what might be a useful exercise math for the kids.

I'm also unclear how 'saving water' works in the larger local and regional context. I'm in central Florida where we get a lot of rain and and the waste water gets diverted back into swamps after treatment. Where it returns to the water cycle via evaporation and percolation back into the aquifer. It isn't like the water is destroyed.

There is also the matter of larger metropolitan areas that covet the water here. So far the present use and regular dry season has meant that the local governments have been able to resist efforts to pipe our 'excess' down to Miami to water their golf courses. This has motivated Miami to institute fairly tight, by East coast standards, water restrictions and to look toward desalination and other methods.

This isn't simply a 'use it or lose it' proposition. It is but it it is attached to a huge emotional, political and economic lever. A lever that has few if any ecological inputs. Unreasonable as it may be in the larger scheme the argument that we 'need' that water carries a lot of weight and keeps several large pipeline projects out of the local supply. Eliminate this unreasonable argument by demonstrating an excess, an excess which is keeping the local wetlands alive, wetlands that don't register in these calculations, and the pipelines get built. Once built they will never go away or stop pumping because they will immediately gain a strong political and economic constituency.

The result of steady pumping to support south Florida will be a large reduction of discharges that keep local wetlands alive, a reduction of aquifer recharge through those wetlands, occasional local water shortages that will reduce surface water usage and further burden the aquifer, reduced pressure on population centers in south Florida to maintain and tighten water use restrictions, and lead to defunding of projects and research seeking to reduce water use and seek alternative cycles and supplies such as reuse and desalination.

As someone with ADHD who can totally zone out in the shower for like an hour or more, something like this would probably help cut down on my water usage.

History Punk @3 - "As someone with ADHD who can totally zone out in the shower for like an hour or more, something like this would probably help cut down on my water usage."

I love a long hot shower, my sinuses love long hot showers, and given a chance I would stay in the shower for a very long time. So I got creative some years ago.

A far easier method for limiting the duration of showers, assuming you don't have an on-demand, tankless, water heater, is to drop the temperature on your water heater. With a lower setting you use more water from the heater and once it is gone the shower get cold in a short time. The effect is that you can, with nothing more than a screwdriver, select the length of the shower by controlling the amount of hot water. Which saves both water and energy.

Lowering the thermostat setting on the water heater also drops the energy loss by the water during storage. As does insulating the tank.

It is possible to set a time limit on a on-demand, tankless. Commercial system sometimes place timers on the hot water line. But they aren't cheap or easy to install if your not familiar with plumbing and handy. Which may mean the Waterdrop may have some utility. But then again a $6 kitchen timer might work just as well. Takes some discipline to turn off the shower when the timer goes off but the Waterdrop requires no lesser amount of self-discipline.

Tweaking the water heater the end of the hot water tends cut the showers short. Unless your a wacko that likes cold showers. In which case your too far gone to help.

"The larger question is: Does the Waterdrop save more water than it takes to produce materials, manufacture, ship, and dispose of when it is no longer wanted"
My impression would be that it depends on your lifestyle. If you live somewhere you're planning to stay for the next 20+ years, then a bucket, a stopwatch (or timer), and an alarm clock (or a bucket + anything electronic gadget with alarm & stopwatch/timer function - e.g. mobiles) will be a far eco-friendlier way to do the math.
If you move around a lot however (e.g. moving home every few years on top of week/month long visits to other places every year), the gadget would get used more than often enough to make up for it, and would be a useful permanent luggage companion.

It a great device to control water usage.Many parts of the world suffer from lack of water while some have lots.Let's say we are on the positive side,but still use water correctly and don't waste it.

The shower meter is a great device to monitor water usage everyday.It is important that we calculate our usage not just for us to save money but for the environment as well.

Tweaking the water heater the end of the hot water tends cut the showers short. Unless your a wacko that likes cold showers. In which case your too far gone to help.

I live in an environment where water is not the issue, but power to provide the water. At home I find myself constantly looking for more pressure, equalling more water in less time. Now I have spent the last few weeks in the Sonoran, seeing the importance of water conservation. Not everybody has consistent annual snowpacks, like I do....

I couldn't definitely think of any greater idea than this one. Your great at elaborating such conflicts between each side. Hope to read more of your blogs.

PLANET EARTH DEHYDRATED: In our 3rd grade elementary school (or there about), we all learned about the water cycle, you know â liquid water evaporates from oceans, lakes, and rivers (ponds, gutters, and wastewater treatment plants) into the atmosphere, then condenses and falls somewhere as rain, hail, sleet, or snow. And of course, thereâs lots of water stored by Earth in the form of glaciers and polar ice caps.

QUESTIONS: But, does water ever escape from our atmosphere? Is there less water on, in, and around our planet Earth today than there was âyesterdayâ? Does life compete for water? As our world population grows, does each additional âcarbon unitâ remove a measure of water from Earthâs available quantity; no longer to be used by another life form for a period of life? How fragile is Earthâs âaquastasisâ? Do we care? Should we care?

CONSIDER: If aliens visiting our planet were systematically removing its life-blood (water), how many cubic tons of water could be removed before our planet would began to exhibit symptoms of dehydration? What would global-dehydration look like? Would we see bizarre weather patterns? Would we see more seismic activity, not only in âusualâ places, but also in unusual places? Would Polar Regions and glaciers begin to experience increased ice-melt, as Earth replenishes the water being taken from her atmosphere? Of course Iâm not actually suggesting aliens are taking our water, but since I did say it, I certainly hope this is not the case. I will suggest (below) that a significant loss of water comes from âbeingsâ a little more familiar to us all.

LAST QUESTION: When any of us, be we a he or a she, or a club, group, association, corporation, conglomerate, city, county, state, or country takes a bottle, a 50 gallon barrel, a 2,000 gallon tank, a 150,000 gallon bladder, etc, etc, etc, and fills it (them; thousands upon thousands of them) full of water and then places an air-tight (water-tight) seal on that container, has that water been effectively removed from Earthâs atmosphere? And there it sits, completely and totally useless to Earth, while âweâ get some sense of comfort in the fact that âweâ have our water, in case of emergency.

REQUEST: Please explain to me why the very craze to hoard water at every level of human existence does not actually serve in some measure to create the very emergency or disaster that could result in the catastrophic loss of our ability to use water.

EXAMPLES:
TEXAS is burning; one of the driest years on record; some have said itâs catastrophic. Firefighters are desperately emptying containers to fight fires â pretty smart that Earth, huh?

MISSISSIPPI: How much water are we âableâ to use along the swollen banks of the Mississippi River? I wonder how many water tanks are being thrashed and emptied. Wait until the surge hits New Orleans.

It a great device to control water usage.Many parts of the world suffer from lack of water while some have lots.Let's say we are on the positive side,but still use water correctly and don't waste it.

What Can an Emoticon Do for Energy Use?

jjacquet — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:22:03 +0000

What Can an Emoticon Do for Energy Use?

Social-norms campaigns are intended to mitigate problem behaviors by conveying the message that problem behavior occurs with far less frequency than people think (e.g. teenage drinking). But for individuals who already abstain from the undesirable behavior, this can actually produce a boomerang effect (similar to the effect we discussed for the Crying Indian PSA) where people see that others are behaving in a certain way and actually do more of the undesired behavior. In other words, there is a tendency toward normalization.

In social messaging, therefore, it is important to build in something to convey the perception of what is commonly approved or disapproved of within the culture (i.e. not simply what is normal but what society thinks should be normal). This is called the injunctive norm.

A team of psychologists tested the injunctive norm in a study on energy use in 290 households in San Marcos, California. They gave half of those households a series of messages containing information on their home's energy and how that energy use compared to their neighbors along with information on how to conserve energy. The other half they sent the same information plus an injunctive message: a smiley face if the household consumed less than average and a frown if it consumed more. Researchers hypothesized that the emoticon would prevent households who consumed less from consuming more when they saw they were below average (the undesirable boomerang effect) and lead to greater overall energy savings. They were right.

With just the descriptive message about energy use relative to their neighbors, short-term energy use (the 3-week period following the final message) fell by 1.22kWh/day (so it did have a positive effect on energy conservation). But the households who received the injunctive message (the emoticon that signaled how their energy use was perceived) reduced their energy consumption by 1.72kWh/day. An emoticon reduced energy use by an additional 40 percent and saved 0.50 additional kWh/day. Maybe it would be best if all behavior came with smiley or frown faces...

Schultz, P.W., J.M. Nolan, R.B. Cialdini, N.J. Goldstein, V. Griskevicius. 2007. The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science 18(5): 429-434.

jjacquet Tue, 06/30/2009 - 04:22

What Is Wrong with The Crying Indian PSA?

jjacquet — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:25:11 +0000

What Is Wrong with The Crying Indian PSA?

As part of the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign, "The Crying Indian" spot first aired in 1971 and was shown throughout the 1970s and 80s. It won two Clio Awards and was named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th Century by Ad Age Magazine:

But research in psychology shows that this public service announcement (PSA) may not have been as effective as is widely believed.

Research by Bob Cialdini at Arizona State University reveals that the PSA's main message -- that we should not litter -- may have been undermined by showing how many people do in fact litter.

In his article titled Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment published in Current Directions in Psychological Science in 2003, Cialdini points out:

Creators of the ad seem to have been correctin their decision to show a dismaying instance of someone (the passing motorist) actively littering the environment; but they may have been mistaken in their decision to use an already-littered environment...

This is because through a series of staged experiments on littering, Cialdini and his team found people are far more likely to litter in an already littered environment than in a clean one.

Cialdini concludes:

Public service communicators should avoid the tendency to send the normatively muddled message that a targeted activity is socially disapproved but widespread.

jjacquet Tue, 06/23/2009 - 08:25

Tags

Cooperation

Evidence-based Conservation

Psychology of Conservation

Stylized Substance

Plus there is the fact that Iron Eyes Cody wasn't a real 'Indian'.

Don't mess with Texas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buDOWX83HMw

much better ad campaign

It might also be argued that the PSA wasn't really intended to be effective(at its implied purpose, at any rate). Keep America Beautiful is basically a greenwash outfit for the manufacturers of what becomes litter, pushing against any policy that would cost them money, and in favor of the idea that litter is caused by individual moral weakness. Their current board of directors continues in that vein.

phisrow made the point I was about to.

Absolutely right -- ever wonder HOW protecting the environment somehow became "put your disposable plastic everything in the trash" instead of "don't let manufacturer's turn every product into something disposable and plastic"?

Every problem has different leverage points to push at. Some will make a huge difference with small pressure; others will have no real effect at all even with huge pressure. It's blazingly obvious with a little thought that "don't litter" is the latter kind of pressure point... but no one seems to notice, or try to shift the focus.

It's true that Cody was not really a Native American/Indian. It's also true that he wasn't genuinely crying. Neither of these facts change the meaning.

I'd also like to point out the add does a fine job of stereotyping Native Americans.

Thanks for the article link, phisrow. It was well written and opened my eyes to something I was completely unaware of regarding that ad and the Ad Council in general.

Lobster, for those who don't know those facts you conclusion may be true. But I think as part of this post is intending to point out, context has a significant impact on the take home message (and how we act on said message). Some may not be bothered by the lack of genuine tears or Native Americans, other like myself believe it ultimately undermines the message. Symbols and stereotypes have a plasticity to them and often absorb the meanings of the eras they travel through. In this case, it is rather distracting and discrediting to the advertisers to have an Italian American actor playing a stereotype in such a demeaning manner. Additionally, if the Orion article's analysis is remotely accurate, the message is already tarnished. Not too mention the contemporary analysis of the structure and content of the advertisement that Jennifer has pointed out.

Interesting stuff, questioning some of my assumptions.

Thanks for the article link, phisrow. It was well written and opened my eyes to something I was completely unaware of regarding that ad and the Ad Council in general.

Interesting stuff, questioning some of my assumptions.

Sorry but the issue is waaay too complex to distill it all down into a simple little experiment that supposedly discredits the entire PSA (which, by the article exploits a pre-existing storyline that most people love -- "what you thought was the case is wrong"). You had to have been around in the early 60's (like some of us geezers) and see how "the norm" truly was to visit your local fast food joint, eat your burger in the car, then throw the trash out the window in the same way that people still do at the movie theater, knowing someone will come along and clean it up.

Lady Bird Johnson put the skids on that behavior in a big way in 1965 as the figurehead for the Highway Beautification Act. By the late sixties non-littering was already an established trend. To make any sense of the Indian PSA, you have to put it into that historical context, which the article makes absolutely no mention of, and I don't even know how you do any sort of multivariate assessment to get at that. The main point is that the PSA wasn't working on a blank canvas (the way things were in 1965). It was simply strengthening an already existing trend. Bottom line, it's a flimsy article which ... eh hem ... fails to include the proper baseline.

Phillip, now we're touching upon the nature of art (including advertising). He's an actor, and there's some assumption that the audience (you and I) are willing participants, meaning we're willing to suspend some disbelief. After all, it doesn't take much thought to realize how very unlikely it is that a TV camera just happened to be filming this old Native American when he noticed the litter and shed a tear.

You may be distracted by the fact that he's not actually a Native American - and that reaction is both understandable and valid - but if you are, it is impossible for that actor to deliver that message to you in that way.

However, I think we are digressing. :)

Public service communicators should avoid the tendency to send the normatively muddled message that a targeted activity is socially disapproved but widespread.

How come it works for right-wingers with their various bogeymen?

Azkyroth, I would actually say it explains why campaigns like "abstinence only" ultimately fail. The findings don''t stop organizations from continually sending such messages, it just states that the desired outcomes may be negatively affected.

That said, when I turn the tables on some the local issues in Utah, like illegal ATV trail-use on public lands, it might explain some of what many of us regionally consider failed ad campaigns.

Phillip

need to protect animals!

What Randy Olson said. It used to be the norm to throw trash out the windows (and it still is in a lot of other countries, by the way). It's probably impossible to tell whether the Iron Eyes Cody campaign had any effect on that, but sometime in the mid to late 1960s, (many, not all) people realized they shouldn't throw trash out on the street.

Unfortunately, cigarette smokers haven't got the message yet. They think nothing of tossing their butts out the window, or dumping their ashtrays in the median at a stoplight. Fortunately they're a dying breed.

The "Don't Mess With Texas" campaign was pretty ubiquitous and effectively played off of basically nationalistic pride. But it also did some very simple things like giving out little trash-bags to keep in your car which (anecdotal) worked well.

A key to a good campaign to change behaviours is to provide a reasonable alternative. I'm sure there is a lesson in there for safe-sex vs abstinence only.

PS: Texas was significantly less crazy (radicalized) politics wise back then too... which helped. These days the campaign would probably be dismissed by ~30% of people as big-government liberal propaganda.

Cialdini and his team found people are far more likely to litter in an already littered environment than in a clean one.

Isn't that basically a rehash of the 'broken windows' theory?

I wish he would come back because the commercial failed through no fault of his own or the ad council but brcause a bunch of lazy arrogant spoiled american slobs who dont give a sh.t

In canada it is so clean you could almost eat off the street. Detroit to windsor ontario one is a complete human toilet/ghetto and waste dump cross the bridge and the other not even a cigarette but on the sidewalk. And as for chief iron eyes cody if he wanted to marrie out of his race an indian and adopt two indian children that was his perogative freedom of expression right? After all you americans are the only idiots in thr world who are so fascinated and obsessed with race. And besides the italians were neutral let the guilt fall on the english and the spanish for indian massacres. There is no need for the littering and graffiti that scares america. In canada ther is no need for the indian to cry. And the message is quite clear dont pollute italian or indian or anyone else.

Im sorry scars america not scares.

The commercial didn't fail.
People did.
Blame yourselves.
Too many pigs stcking their snouts in the trough and not cleaning up after themselves is the failure.
You people are zombies. WAKE UP ALREADY.
You live in the NEW WORLD ORDER.
You have been fattened for the slaughter and time's up.

crying indian