Unless your bathtub is leaking, there likely isn’t a lot you can do to save water and energy when using the bathtub, other than avoid it altogether. A bathtub only accounts for 1.7% of the average home’s total indoor water usage. While this may be surprising, it is attributed largely to the fact that most of us take showers, which constitute an average of 16.8% of the total indoor water usage.

Unlike the shower, the bathtub is a fixed volume, meaning reducing the flow rate will have no impact on water consumption. Instead, it is up to the person taking a bath to determine how much water they use and how hot the water is that you fill it with. The average bathtub hold 24 gallons of water, while the daily per capita use is 1.2 gallons based on a daily usage per capita of 0.1 baths. In other words, the average person takes 36.5 baths a year and uses 438 gallons of water for baths annually.

As you can see, this is not a large amount of water compared to other water consumers such as the toilet and shower. As a result the energy savings opportunities for water and hot water reduction would not amount to a significant amount of savings across North American households. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do with you bathtub to be more environmentally friendly. See our bathtub tips below for more information.