> Why would any sane person leave the water running while brushing their teeth?

a) the price of tap water being cheap enough that the difference in consumption between efficient and wasteful behavior not causing a meaningful enough difference in the bottom-line cost of the monthly water bill to affect a change in behavior

b) sanity not being the same thing as morality, with the sane person not considering the waste of fresh water to be a moral or ethical violation.

I'm not really sure how wasting a bit of water while brushing your teeth in Berlin could be considered particularly immoral or unethical. Berlin is, as far as I know, in no danger of water shortages and being more frugal with water in Berlin does nothing whatsoever for the billions of people in the world who have no or limited access to safe water supplies. Am I wrong?

It is not being wasted.

It is being paid for, and then goes back to the earth.

It is not like it is being contaniminated with mercury.

Wonder what the harmful emissions from my flat and walk to work were vs the van. /s

Smug statements about how wasteful people not living in these fringe conditions are always remind me of the Soylent founder lecturing about how doing laundry wastes water while also reordering all his clothes from china when they get dirty. [1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/op-ed-how-i-gave-up-...

I was incredulous that someone could be so obtuse, so I went and eventually found the quote. You've done a really poor job of paraphrasing him.

He reorders his clothes on what we can presume is a similar time scale to normal folks', and he washes them with "less water", "thanks to synthetic fibers."

It's interesting that you've included your source and managed to totally misrepresent it.

I remember reading the article awhile ago and came across the same passage (and remember having a similar reaction):

"I have not done laundry in years. I get my clothing custom-made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my usedgarments, helping out those in need."

To me that reads like the author just buys a bunch of clothes new, then donates them when dirty because the cost of washing the clothes exceeds replacement value.

I really think he's saying he doesn't use a washer/dryer.

He states very clearly that he washes and reuses them.

> He states very clearly that he washes and reuses them.

No, he very clearly does not state that he washes or reuses them. Here is the clothing section, in full:

--- I enjoy doing laundry about as much as doing dishes. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.

It bothers me immensely that all clothing is hand made. Automation is woefully absent from the textile industry, but I don’t think it always will be. For now a few new t shirts and jeans per month is not very offensive. I certainly buy less clothing overall than a typical consumer. Synthetic fabrics are easy to recycle and I believe will soon be made with biofuels. Still, this area needs some work. ---

The only reference to washing them is the water savings of buying new over what it would take to wash them; now, he also says that he buys "a few new jeans and t-shirts each month" and "less clothing than the typical consumer". Now, those descriptions appear to conflict, and either one of them seems to suggest enough reuse that many people would assume he must be washing them a few times -- going with the first (which is the one least indicative of reusing clothes a lot), and assuming "a few" is not more than 5 of each, he'd have to be wearing each at least ~6 times, which seems a lot without washing. But he doesn't say he is washing, that's just an implication that is easy, though not necessarily correct, to read into his statement.

"it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them" rather implies that he does not wash them (otherwise the most logical wording would be "it takes less water to make my clothes than it does to wash them")

That is correct that he says he doesn't use a washer or dryer, however it is incorrect to saw that he washes and reuses them with the information provided. He says it takes less water to make the clothes than to wash them, not that he actually washes them. In fact, he says he donates his used clothing, not mentioning if they have been washed or not.

Agreed! The same goes for my solar panels: Yes, I use a renewable source of energy. But how many resources were required to built these panels and once they break, where do they go?

I'm not quite sure the ecological footprint of my life style is smaller than of someone who lives in an apartment in Berlin. However since I live in the van, I pay way more attention to where I and others waste resources. Maybe a first step to make a change?

Solar panels make their ecological footprint after 3 years of use and last for 30 years. 80% of the material in solar panels is recycled from old solar panels.

So no matter how you turn it, solar panels are a lot alot more environmentally friendly than convential energy sources.

>80% of the material in solar panels is recycled from old solar panels.

That doesn't pass the sniff test. Solar cell production is on a strong upwards curve, if 80% is recycled from other panels then supply would be bounded by old solar stock recovery, which is not the case.

I can't see how 80% of solar panel material, even if we're talking exclusively about the PV cells and not the surrounds, could be from old solar panels, especially not 30 year old solar panels.

In fact it is 90% http://earth911.com/eco-tech/recycle-solar-panels/ and there are nee processes that reach 96%.

That's 90% of the material being recovered from old solar panels, not 90% of new panels being made up of recycled material.

That's still great news, but nothing like:

>80% of the material in solar panels is recycled from old solar panels.

Which implies new panels rolling off the production line consisted of 80% recycled material from old panels. That's not possible. If you have 10 old panels coming in to be recycled, and you recover 90% of the materials from them, and you're producing 100 new panels (since production is increasing), at best you're gonna get 9% recycled material into your new panels.

> But how many resources were required to built these panels

You manufacture things like that near (nearly) free energy sources like rivers.

what does he mean with "It bothers me immensely that all clothing is hand made. Automation is woefully absent from the textile industry"?

I thought all clothing construction was automated in factories, like any assembly line automation.

I closed the tap while I was brushing my teeth, too. But sometimes I'd open the tap to spit out the tooth paste. Don't ask me why, but quite often I just continued brushing my teeth for a few more seconds before I finally spat out the tooth paste. During these seconds I probably wasted a lot of water.

Of course this is just an example. Maybe there are even better examples like flushing your pee away or ignoring a leaking tap...

At the end I just wanted to make a point. I'm definitely not a perfect roll model for a sustainable life. But the van life made me more aware of how we take things for granted although they are limited.

> Why would any sane person leave the water running while brushing their teeth?

Because turning it on and off all the time is inconvenient.

Operating the faucet with a foot pedal fixes this. People are too lazy to push it down if they don't need water right now.

With a pedal, you can also turn the water off in the middle of washing your hands. It's like a small-scale navy shower.

Why don't you wet the brush by dipping it into the glass? Why even wet the brush at all? The inside of your mouth is already wet.

But then again, I'm a bit of an oddball regarding tooth-brushing. In my view, the alcohol-based mouthwash is there to do a scorched-earth annihilation of all mouth bacteria, and the toothbrush is only there to break through biofilm and clear away all the tiny, tiny corpses. So I brush with a tiny bit of soap and tiny bit of toothpaste, while holding a mouthful of mouthwash. (And sometimes I use peroxide-based mouthwash, to attack the anaerobes under the gums. Cavities from S. mutans aren't the only reasons to brush.) If I routinely rinsed my brush, I would do it in an antibacterial, not with tap water, but when it comes out of my mouth, it is essentially covered in alcohols already, so I don't. As a result, the only use I have for the sink is as something to spit into.

Dude, you don't really want to try to do "scorched-earth" annihilation of all mouth bacteria-- or bacteria anywhere else for that matter. First, it won't work, you'll never get rid of all bacteria. Second, that's like taking the surviving bacteria "to the gym", clearing out the normal flora of bacteria, and replacing it with whatever nasties can survive your treatments.

Flossing and brushing (and some tongue scraping) is all that is necessary. Alcohol based mouthwash dehydrates the mouth a bit-- which might precipitate bad breath.

> that's like taking the surviving bacteria "to the gym", clearing out the normal flora of bacteria, and replacing it with whatever nasties can survive your treatments.

That argument holds for any point on the "target clean level" curve, though... for example I could use it to argue that flossing is cleaning beyond what's optimal. Not that I think it, but what is the best strategy, long term?

There is research to prove that mouthwash helps also. But certainly brushing and flossing are the fundamentals. Tongue scraping is not. My partner works in this domain.

No need to wet the brush - the toothpaste works better without it.

Oh really? Do you have a source for this? I'm hearing this for the first time now.

My partner works in the domain.

Is there a proper study of Medical source on that?

I'll ask her when she's back from Devon!