July 2020, Christine Muller
In the past months, we all have learned how important it is to wash our hands well. Especially after coming home, we need to thoroughly wash our hands with soap and warm water. Warm water does clean more effectively than cold water.
Of course, we wash our hands very often throughout the day, even when at home. Sometimes we turn on the hot water faucet, wash our hands with soap, rinse it off, and then turn off the faucet before the water has even turned warm. In such cases, all we did was waste the energy from our water heater. One may argue that this energy does not amount to much, but when we think about how often we are doing this every day, and the impact of millions of people doing the same, it does matter.
Consider that we need to lower carbon emissions by 45% compared to 2010 levels and to get to net zero emissions by 2050, if we want human civilization to flourish in the future. Being mindful of small actions, such as the way we wash our hands, is a low hanging fruit; we do have to tackle the bigger and more difficult issues as well.
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