Change your bath and shower habits
Save energy with quicker, more efficient washes
Reducing the amount of water used when washing can help save plenty of money on both your water and energy bills.
If you’re able to, you might look at switching a few baths every week for showers. Maybe you can have shorter showers.
Or perhaps there are other ‘hacks’ to help you make your washing more efficient.
Swapping baths for showers.
According to the Energy Saving Trust, swapping just one bath per week to a shower could save £14 per year on your energy bills, and a further £12 on metered water bills.*
That’s quite the saving, and it all adds up if you’re able to switch multiple baths for showers.
If you’ve not got a shower in the house, shop around to see if there are shower head attachments that fit onto bath taps that you could use in your home.
Our Green Doctors have identified helpful impartial advice on what can really make a difference in reducing bills and saving energy.
Download our supporting home resources – our action plan, our meal and shopping planners, and our stickers – to help you make changes which stick.
Taking shorter showers
The average shower length in the UK is 7 and a half minutes. Cutting this can save lots of water as well as the energy needed to heat it (and of course, a bit of time in the morning!).
The Energy Saving Trust say that reducing showers by even one minute would save the average household £18 a year in energy bills (and a further £19 on water bills if on a water meter).*
Why not time your shower to see how long you spend in it, and work out how much you could save? Remember, it’s how you wash and what you wash with that cleans you, rather than the length of time you spend in the shower.
You can make other changes too. Washing long hair can take a long time, for example, so try turning off the water while applying products such as conditioner. And if your shower takes a little while to warm up, time how long it takes and set an alarm so you know exactly when the water is ready.
There could be other ways to reduce the amount of water you use.
Make a plan. Stay warm. Save energy.
- Place one of our stickers near the shower as a reminder to use less water.
- Turning down the water temperature even a small amount using your boiler can save even more energy.
*Savings based on a typical three-bedroom semi-detached gas heated house, with an 88% efficient gas boiler and average gas tariff of 6.9p/kWh and electricity tariff of 27.4p/kWh. Emission savings include all scopes and greenhouse gases expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. Correct as of October 2023.
