14 DAY TRIAL // According to specialist Amanda Carrico with the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment in Tennessee, US, washing your hands with hot water is a complete waste of energy.
This is because, contrary to expectations, the supposedly hot water folks use to wash their hands is too cold to be able to kill any germs. Apparently, these nasty microscopic creatures die as temperatures that would also cause people to suffer serious burns.
Hence, all one accomplishes when using hot water to clean themselves is burn loads of energy for no reason. Since this energy more often than not goes hand in hand with greenhouse gas emissions, it would be great if people were to use cold water. Grist tells us that, if one really wants to kill the germs that have set up camp on their hands, using soap and scrubbing vigorously for at least 20 seconds should do the trick.
And if one really wants to play it green, one might want to turn the water off altogether while scrubbing, I would add.