Down the drain: how the phones in the shower are raising bills and ruining sustainability

If there was a competition for the cleanest man in New Zealand, Matt * from Lower Hutt would definitely be in the race.

He puts his personal surf record in the shower in about 1.5 hours. That marathon effort was accomplished while watching episodes of a television series on a Saturday morning.

Matt rarely showers without his phone in hand, hanging just outside the glass screen door of the condensation cover. It has been part of your daily ritual since you acquired a smartphone, about a decade ago.

“I surf social media a lot, check emails. If I plan on a longer one, I could watch an episode or two on Netflix,” he says.

As a busy parent, he enjoys quiet time to himself. But his happy place, at times, has made him unpopular at home.

“The wife pays the electricity bill every month. I hear from her every month. [about the huge bills]. We also have a bathroom. So the children are not very happy that I occupy all the space. “

Matt’s family has asked him to take a long bath instead, but he’s not intimidated.

Wellington’s Sustainability Trust, a social enterprise that offers free home energy use assessments, says that bringing our addictions to the phone in the shower is a big step back for home sustainability.

However, the organization’s staff is encountering an increasing number of homes where people are checking social media or entering another episode of whatever they are watching, as the hot water from the shower falls on their shoulders. .

Karl Wheddon, a home performance advisor at the trust, says it was when waterproof phones first became common about two years ago that he began hearing from clients whose plans for a more sustainable home were being frustrated by teens filming dance routines in the shower for social media.

“I went to a house and the lady told me that she had a teenage boy, and she practically found him in the shower, TikTokking. And he would be there for 10 to 15 minutes or so.”

Wheddon says that meant the unfortunate family member, the last in line for the shower, was cold.

But what may seem like a small indulgence can have a major effect on water and energy use, he says. Especially since water shortages become common in our major cities every summer. (Currently, people in drought-stricken Auckland are advised to keep their showers for four minutes or less.)

Luke *, 26, from Wellington, acknowledges that he has been using his phone in the shower since he was 16 years old. Over the past decade, he’s spent up to 30 minutes at a time basking in the sun under the shower head: texting friends, watching TV, and catching on about current affairs. It doesn’t have a water-resistant phone, but says its height is an advantage in keeping it dry.

“To use my phone in the shower, as I am quite tall, I can hold it up to my head and usually the water in the shower just bounces under the phone.”

Bringing your phone into the shower may seem strange to some, but innovators seem to have picked up on the consumer trend. For more than $ 30, one can buy a shower curtain with different sized pockets, designed to hold a phone or tablet. Marketed as a way to “stay in touch with the world while bathing,” the product’s sales pitch boasts that users can “listen to music, play games, watch news, social media sites, and enjoy entertainment without delay.”

Both Matt and Luke consider themselves eager to live a more sustainable life, but admit that they haven’t come together when it comes to the amount of water and energy they use on their phones in the shower.

Wheddon says that when he evaluates houses, he receives about two or three heads of households a month with complaints about surfing in the shower. But he says if the offending phone addict is having trouble kicking their habit, there are a few things that could reduce water and energy use. Suggest using an egg timer or setting a mobile phone alarm to control shower times. Lowering the temperature on your hot water thermostat and installing a water-saving shower head or flow restrictor can also prevent more water and money from going down the drain.

Wheddon says that hot water generation is one of the biggest energy users in the home.

“Heating water can account for about a third of your energy bills. And certainly … shorter showers mean you’ll use less water and save city resources.”

He says that most of the hot water used in the home comes from the shower, so it’s worth making an effort to keep them short if you want a more environmentally and financially sustainable home.

For Matt and Luke, that means it might be time they found another place to surf the web.

* Matt and Luke asked to be identified by their first name only.