By peeing in the shower instead of flushing the toilet, you could save around 2,000 gallons of water per year.
Why Peeing in the Shower Is Actually Eco-Friendly
It sounds like the kind of advice you'd expect from a college roommate, not an environmental scientist. But the numbers don't lie: peeing in the shower is genuinely good for the planet.
The Flush Factor
The average toilet uses about 1.6 gallons per flush (older models use up to 3.5 gallons). Most people urinate 6-8 times per day. If you redirect just one of those daily bathroom trips to your morning shower, you're looking at real savings.
At 1.6 gallons per flush, that's roughly 584 gallons per year. With an older toilet? You could save over 1,200 gallons annually. Some estimates put the figure closer to 2,000 gallons when accounting for the water used to treat and transport sewage.
Is It Sanitary?
Here's the thing: urine is sterile when it leaves your body. It's mostly water, with some urea, salts, and trace organic compounds. The shower water rinses everything down the same drain that eventually leads to the same treatment plant.
Dermatologists and urologists generally agree there's no hygiene issue here. The real concern—if there is one—is behavioral. Standing and peeing might, over time, train certain muscles in ways that could theoretically affect bladder control. But the research on this is thin at best.
The Bigger Picture
Water conservation adds up in unexpected ways:
- A 10-minute shower uses about 20 gallons of water
- The average American household flushes the toilet nearly 20 times per day
- Toilet flushing accounts for roughly 30% of indoor water use
Every flush you skip is water that doesn't need to be treated, pumped, and processed twice—once on the way in, once on the way out.
Who's Actually Doing This?
More people than you'd think. Surveys suggest anywhere from 60-80% of people admit to peeing in the shower at least occasionally. In 2014, a Brazilian environmental group ran a campaign explicitly encouraging the practice, complete with cartoon animations.
The University of East Anglia in the UK once calculated that if all 15,000 of their students peed in the shower once a day, the university would save enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool 26 times per year.
So next time you're lathering up and nature calls, maybe don't fight it. You're not being lazy—you're being an environmentalist.