[vineyardmike]

While I agree that it’s kinda unpleasant to get all sweaty before work, many larger corporations have offices (usually with gyms) have locker rooms and showers to support bikers. While I’m able to take transit, many of my coworkers do bike+shower at the office for commuting.

[mosura]

Is all that showering better or worse for the environment than using more appropriate transport in the first place?

[asdff]

The bike is in fact the more appropriate transport for moving a 200lb person than a 5000lb vehicle. Literally 95% of the energy being consumed is just to move the damned vehicle around, not to do anything productive with it.

[mosura]

Your relative masses are obviously exaggerated.

Showering uses hot water and you also must change clothes, which also require cleaning. If you are doing this twice per day in addition to someone using some other means of transportation there is a non trivial energy cost involved.

If the car propulsion is non fossil fuel based then the car wins because you are using much less water.

[asdff]

I shower once a day regardless. I combine my bike commute on the way in with train or bus depending on the route I feel like. No sweat that way. The ride back I will do on a bike and take a shower after. Gets the cardio requirement done at the same time as the commute so it's a two birds one stone thing.

[tialaramex]

Showering does use hot water, but, it's maybe 20-30 litres, and you're heating up by what 25-30 K ? That's just not very much energy, and since we want heat we can go via a heat pump to do less work, whereas that's not an option for the car.

I did some envelope guesses and I can't see how this can come out for the car.

[etrautmann]

Is showering worse than congestion and vehicle emissions? …no. This is not a good faith argument