False: The WEF has suggested that people bathe 'once a week or less to save the planet.'

By: Praveen Kumar
January 13 2023

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Context

In the last few days of December 2022 and the first week of January 2023, several social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms claimed that the World Economic Forum (WEF) had ordered or urged the public to bathe only once a week or less to battle climate change and "save the planet." Some of these viral social media posts carried the headline and the link to an article published by Newspunch or a screenshot of it to support their claim.

However, the WEF has not ordered or made any such suggestion or public announcement.

In Fact

A Newspunch article dated December 29, 2022 claims that the WEF told the public to bathe less, but Newspunch does not cite a WEF page as its source for this claim. It claims that a German broadcaster told its viewers that washing only once a week is necessary for the "goals outlined by the globalist elites as part of their Great Reset agenda." The rest of the story quotes and then partially reproduces an article titled "Germany's ZDF Public Television Suggests Bathing Once a Week Would Be Beneficial" by Watts Up With That, a conspiracy-pseudoscience website known to publish unverifiable information lacking evidence.

Though headlined with a claim about ZDF, the Watts Up With That article says that the German public broadcasting institution Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR) made this suggestion to the public. It claims that WDR, via the social media accounts of its section "kugelzwei," wrote that bathing once a week was quite normal a hundred years ago and presented this idea as a way for people to save heat and energy. It also claims that kugelzwei pointed out the benefits of following this suggestion. However, the Instagram post in question does not suggest people adopt such a practice. It only presents a creative imagination of what such a practice would look like and how our lives would be different if we were to follow it.

The WEF had no such announcement to "save the planet" by bathing less on its official website or social media.

Logically has previously debunked fake news published by Newspunch, including unsubstantiated narratives and misrepresentation of news stories involving the WEF. Newspunch is a Los Angeles-based website that often publishes fabricated and fake news masquerading as real news. 

The Verdict

The WEF has not suggested that people bathe once a week or less to conserve water or save the planet. It is a claim pushed by websites known to publish fake news and unreliable, unsubstantiated information. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.