You know the saying, right? If it's yellow, let it mellow...if it's brown, flush it down"? That's right, readers, today's post is not something you'd necessarily want to read during your lunch break, and it's not for those who are uncomfortable with bodily functions. So if you fall into those categories, maybe skip this one. If not, read on because I'm talking about pee, poop and toilets today, my friends.
Did you know that the largest water user in our homes is the toilet? If you have an "antique" toilet that pre-dates 1980, then you might be flushing as many as 5-7 gallons of water each time you flush. Later models aren't necessarily much better using around 1.6 gallons of water per flush. In addition, about 50% of toilets have leaks - either the toilet is running, which you can often hear, and means that water is leaking into the bowl from the tank. And some pesky leaks can be silent. These leaks can account for 15 gallons of wasted water per day, which equates to 5,475 gallons per year.
To make your porcelain throne a bit more eco-friendly, first check for a leak. You can do this easily enough with food coloring. Put a dye tablet or food coloring in the water tank. If color appears in the bowl without flushing, then you have a leak that needs repairing.
But you don't have to stop there.
Let's say you have unloaded your old circa 1980 toilet and installed a new low-flush toilet yielding 1.6 gallons of water per flush. And let's say you "go" an average of 9 times a day. That's 14.4 gallons of water a day, or 100.8 gallons of water a week or 403.2 gallons of water a month or 4,838.4 gallons of water a year - give or take a few. That is a whole lot of water. Enough water, in fact, for a small shark tank at an aquarium. Literally. The aquarium pictured above is a mere 4,000 gallon tank.
What can you do, you ask?
Don't flush as much. Now, I'm talking toilet exclusively. There are a lot of other things you can do in your home to conserve water, so I do understand that this sounds a bit extreme. But do you really need to flush that often? I mean, once it's in the bowl, it's not really going anywhere is it? Especially with the lid down. Now, this is not always "polite". I wouldn't reccommend following the "let yellow mellow" rule at your friend's house, or at work. Obviously, there are limits. But at home, when it's just family, why the heck not? After all, it was good enough for the Fockers.
I give the idea two out of four stars because it's kind of crazy liberal, and not exactly water cooler talk, but give it a shot! I won't tell anyone. And go easy on the toilet paper while you're at it.
3 comments:
my 7 year old let it mellow for about 2 weeks when we discovered it and let me tell you how gross that was.. lol
ew michelle.
James's uncle has a cabin in Utah and we have to do that when we visit. Once the toilet fills up it automatically flushes (due to gravity I guess). So you don't flush when you pee, but you do when you poop.
At the school where I used to teach, our biggest band fundraiser was selling low-flush toilets! Yes, you heard me right! The water district made it a big campaign every year, and they enlisted our help, for which we made a pretty significant profit for our music program.
First we had a committee of students and parents who heavily advertised the event, and a few weeks later we worked for 2 very long days selling the toilets at a local school. The kids LOVED the idea of selling toilets, and you would not believe the numbers of people that showed up! Year after year! We had some kids selling the toilets themselves, some selling toilet seats, some loading toilets into people's cars. It was a HUGE event. Then we worked yet another day when all the people would bring back their old toilets, which ended up being ground up and used to build roads. Yes, you could be driving on old toilets!
I am proud to say that I have contributed to this cause. And we have low flush toilets in our new house, too.
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