I live in a share house with several people and they all help out around the house by stacking the dishwasher, cleaning the floors and tidying up the kitchen.

It’s great how everyone does their little bit to make sure the house is in order, but are they wasting resources? On one hand, they are but on the other hand I think by living all in the one house we end up sharing resources more effectively and efficiently.

For instance, at dinner time, everyone is in the kitchen at once cooking up their meals. Here, we save on electricity and gas by sharing the oven and lighting that goes into cooking food (which, I might add, comes from a shared fridge). Sometimes when we have barbecues people add their meat on, so they don’t have to heat a pan on the stove. I think you get the picture there.

Next up, with dish washing, we all manage to fill up the dishwasher so there is no room wasted inside the dishwasher, as a couple might have. This means we save on water, energy and detergent costs. Also, mopping the floors and vacuuming the carpet is done as regularly as any place and since there aren’t five people doing it at five different homes, more energy and resources are conserved in that regard.

Finally, when it comes to internet and our home network we are able to share downloads, reducing the time we need our computers on downloading, we share a router and switch and we share a file server to keep all our files. The result - we live happily and we conserve energy which we might happen to waste, living on our own.

That said, I think there are a number of ways in which living in a sharehouse uses more resources. We each cook our own meals, throwing out anything we don’t eat. Some people I live with aren’t as concious of resource wastage as I am and some even blatantly disregard it by having 20 minute showers and using hot water unnecessarily.

Overall though, I think living in a share house reduces the impact of us on the environment as it takes into account the economic principle of economies of scale - where the more people using it, the more efficiently we can use the resources. It’s a pity more people don’t live together or our environment might just be a little better off.