Final Week

This week was the last week of the challenge and I really wanted to make a difference. I was dedicated to finishing of the challenge with a strong week. I have now mastered the art of taking a short shower, applying the soap beforehand. Pre wetting my hair in the hand basin and having a water proof phone cover to keep a close eye on my time.  I have finally felt comfortable in reducing my showers to less than 3 minutes. It is no longer a challenge and more of a lifestyle change that is now a way of life, I now have no need to shower longer than 3 minutes and feel completely comfortable in doing this. Whereas at the start of my challenge I felt unclean, dirty and uncomfortable. It’s amazing how such a small change in lifestyle can have such a major impact on the environment, I will collaborate all the statistics and present them in my final report.

Standard Deviation: 6.8
Median: 164
Highest: 175
Lowest: 154
Spread: 20
Mean: 164.1

I finished my last week very strongly as you can see from the statistics I was extremely consistent and had a fairly low spread of only 20 seconds from my highest to lowest time. I am very proud of my efforts and hope I have inspired others to undertake their own environmental challenge.

Week 7

This is the second last week, I'm starting to feel very comfortable with this challenge. I no longer skip out on showering and have found a lot of consistency and am comfortably able to stay under the 3 minute mark. But it could be a bit too late to achieve my overall goal of averaging under 3 minutes per shower. My current average is 3.42 minutes per shower so in order to reduce my total under the 3 minute, I have to not shower for the entirety of next week. I have decided that I will continue to shower everyday as not showering for a week is unreasonably and I don’t want to skew the data. I have realized that reducing your shower time is something relative simple and doesn't effect your life at all once you’re used to it, but it can make a massive difference. If everyone in my city of Adelaide with a population of 1.3 million all reduce their shower time by 3 minutes. We could save over 65 million litres per day that’s over 25 Olympic sized swimming pools!

The below statistics are based on if everyone in Adelaide reduced their water consumption by 3 minutes.

Water consumption statistics (Per day)	Population 1.3 million
Adelaide reduction in water	65,579,800 liters
Olympic swimming pools	26.23192
Cost of water consumption	$152,145.00

Week 6

Winter is coming! I have definitely felt the effect of the incoming winter this week, as it is starting to get colder in Adelaide. As I live in a share house in the city our heating is lousy and we are lacking insulation. Having a hot shower is one of the only ways in which I can keep warm and thaw out. As the temperature gets colder so does the incentive for having a longer shower, this week I tried to stay on track but I was tempted especially on the cold days to shower a little bit over time. This is prevalent in my graph this week. I have plotted my time in seconds for this week, you can clearly see I lack consistent results and discipline. I have started looking forward to this challenge to be over, but I am still determined to make a lasting change on my shower times. I’ve been looking into buy a blow heating that I can use as an alternative to warm me up on cold days so I can continue to remain on target. Hopefully next week goes better!

Statistics; Shower length in seconds

mean	221.42
median	179
max	350
min	167

Week 5

This week marks the halfway point in my environmental challenge. I really focussed hard on consistency this week I purchased a water proof phone cover for my phone. Now I can watch my time and make sure I stay under the 3 minute mark. This has definitely been a game changer as I can now see the time, it puts more pressure on me to make sure I don’t go over 3 minutes. This week I noticed some routines, I now apply the soap to myself before I start my shower to give me that extra time, I also wet my hair in the hand basin and then apply some shampoo. My showers have become a lot more efficient then before and I feel as if the challenge has become more achievable. I have noticed that I don’t feel as self-conscious about my smell as I did at the beginning. Although it has started to get a lot colder recently and I feel as if my new technique of applying my soap and shampoo before I go in the shower, will no longer be viable soon as I will just be too cold. My consistency was outlined this week by the reduction in my stand deviation.

Shower times and Standard Deviation

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5
	363	234	240	145	137
	543	378	450	0	167
	380	0	234	154	178
	410	221	537	250	159
	290	129	159	0	164
	178	411	267	0	0
	376	0	556	430	301
Standard Deviation	103	152	149	149	81

Week 4

Challenge Journal 19/4/15

This was a much more relaxing week as it was the first week of holidays, and I was determined to get back on track with my water saving goal. I made the decision that I wasn’t going to do much the first week of holidays and I was just going to rest up and play video games. This was also my chance to skip out on hygiene and reduce my water savings, and that’s exactly what I did! I managed to skip out on shower for 3 days this week and went 2 days without showering in a row. I felt really dirty but I had to tough it out keep to my goals the main effect of this was I washed my face a lot, when I did shower I used A LOT of soap. My hair was probably the most annoying part as it got really greasy. Not showering wasn’t that bad I just made sure I had a lot of deodorant on before I went outside. I am very pleased with my progress this week as it was my most successful so far I used a tiny 317 litres of water this week, compared to last week which was 767 litres. And I was well below the target of 355 litres. I definitely wouldn’t brag about skipping showers but it has been an effective strategy.