CHANDLER: Green nation wants it all

Sure, save the Earth but leave my shower alone

Mary Voelz Chandler

Published May 2, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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The mayor of Denver recently asked us to take a "five-step pledge for the environment."

Naturally, he made this request on the annual observance of Earth Day, at Denver's Botanic Gardens, an Earth Day kind of place to be sure. To soften the blow of requested sacrifice, the city introduced the Denver Daisy, a showy bloom in yellow and dark red with low-water needs.

"By changing five very easy habits, we can all contribute to the environmental and economic health of our city - both today and for generations to come," Mayor John Hickenlooper said in a release churned out by the city's press office. I fought printing it.

These are simple changes, much shorter than the usual 12-step improvement program. For one thing, they don't involve calling a sponsor at midnight if you suddenly feel like tossing a pop can someplace besides the recycling bin.

But these ideas are much like everything else the American public has been reading about (ad nauseam) of late. My face is turning green from hearing and reading the word green. That's because so many pleas to be nicer to the world in which we live and be a less-greedy nation have now turned into a marketing tool for kitchen counters, dresses, cars and, well, anything you can possibly buy.

So this Take Five Pledge is nice but verges on window dressing. And one of the calculations used in the announcement confuses me.

I've seen scientific material on the savings realized by using compact fluorescent bulbs, and I figure that if someone says a switch to reusable grocery bags will mean that 208 fewer plastic bags per person wind up in a landfill, math tells me we lug home an average of four bags a week. But I don't get the shower figures:

"Shorten your shower by 45 seconds," says the release. "Doing so would save Denver residents two gallons a day - adding up to 400 million gallons annually citywide - about as much water as Denver's five largest parks need in a year."

The release notes that this is a "daily shower."

But what kind of shower is this? Is this the quick splash on a hot summer afternoon before going out that night? Is this the brisk winter-morning shower when the house is still cold and you figure you may as well hurry up and get over the process of getting cold all over again?

Or is this the shower you need after working in the yard, cleaning the attic, tinkering with the car, running, playing tennis - well, you get the idea. The shower when you really are dirty.

I've never timed a shower, but I try to be prudent. No Broadway musicals re-created in my shower. So I put a clock on the edge of the tub and discovered that a typical shower lasts about three minutes, give or take 30 seconds.

To comply with this request might mean walking around all day with a head full of hair product. Shower gel? Forget it - bad news in a dry climate.

The next Five Step recommendation asks us to "replace at least one car trip a week with walking, biking or public transportation." Yes, that surely would reduce carbon emissions. But wouldn't a walk from home to work in August increase the number of daily showers?

The city says Denver residents can pick up a brochure on the Take Five Environmental Pledge at public libraries and recreation centers, where, presumably, they'll begin putting timers on all those showers.

As someone who witnessed the first Earth Day during college in 1970, all this sounds nice. But what does it really mean? That beautiful April day - I still have a button from it somewhere - the school's quadrangle filled with people eager to learn how to save the planet. Vietnam undoubtedly came up, too.

But when the crowd left and everyone went back to class, the lawn was awash in cups, cans and the junk a zillion people leave behind. What slobs, I thought. Talk about hypocrisy.

The pledge strikes the same chord. It plays well in a city awaiting national scrutiny during the Democratic National Convention. Several magazines I read include those devoted to architecture, design and preservation, and over the past year "going green" has been an overarching theme in stories and, of course, ads.

On one hand, they've made their point and "green" has become a national pursuit. On the other hand, how real can this be in a nation that wants it all?

Me? I just want my shower.

chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

• May 5, 2008

  7:56 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  teblackman writes:

  Good points. My favorite is water. Water is a renewable resource. This year we will have plenty. If we don't use it after the reservoirs are full, then it will flow downstream. If we take long showers, it will go to the treatment plant and then flow downstream. It just doesn't matter in these years of plentiful snow.

  Also, the biggest user of water are your sprinklers. Think about the comparison between turning on your sprinklers for a few hours versus flushing a toilet or taking a shower. It seems to me that these stupid lifestyle changes (shorter showers, better toilets, energy efficient dishwashers) are ridiculous if you turn on your sprinkler afterwards. But let me say I like green grass even though we live in a near desert. So, let's use it now that we have it and when the drought returns, we will deal with it.

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