With all of the exposure I have had over the past few weeks to the areas of water resources management and waste water treatment, it has gotten me to think about an activity that I have been doing for the past few years, and that is water conservation via the toilet. Before I go any farther, I would like to mention that I am not exactly what you would necessarily call a water resource conscious person. For example, I like my showers long and hot to wake me up in the morning and I know that is one of the main areas of domestic water use. But, what I am about to describe is so passive and easy that even I can do it.
Don't flush the toilet after every use. Now, I understand that most of you that read this are probably going to initially shake your heads and say "ah gross, no way," but just hear me out on this one. Personally, I am almost always consuming a fluid of some kind or another whether it's soda, beer, water, coffee, you name it. That leads to, of course, a rather active bladder and I think you can see where I am going with this now. When your plumbing is in what you can call an "active state," most of what is excreted is pure water and when mixed with the water already in the basin, does it really warrant a flush? Obviously, there will be a point that it is just too...rank to not flush, but I'll get to that in a moment.
There are several standards in the United States for gallons per flush. Before 1994, the typical toilet used 3.4 gallons of water or more but since Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the new standard is 1.6 gallons per flush or less. Let's take our "unpleasant" value to five uses before a flush and let's assume just for the sake of argument that every toilet in the city of Fargo meets the 1994 standards (which is doubtful). For five uses, that's a savings of 6.4 gallons and let's say that all 95,000 or so residents do this once a day. That equates to about 608,000 gallons of water saved every day and the city of Fargo treats about 11 million gallons per day. That 608,000 gallons would make up over 5% of the city's water usage every day; that's 222 million gallons per year.
At this point you may be thinking "So what? Water is a renewable resource." It is, but you may not have considered what happens to impurities in the water that get filtered out at the treatment plant. At least in Fargo, the separated sludge goes into the landfill never to be seen again and it costs money to treat as well. Besides, water is a renewable resource only for as long as we manage it properly.
Now I am not saying that leaving the toilet un-flushed is going to solve all of our water resource problems, but it's a simple thing that even the most undetermined of people can do to lessen environmental impact.
I usually flush after 2 or 3 uses, depending of course on the particular use.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've always found irritating is how water gets used in general. Maybe its different where I live in the east where there is plenty of fresh water, but there are car washes everywhere. While I understand that washing your car helps to maintain it, it seems that as a species, we have a lot of problems allocating resources to where they are actually needed, compared to where they can be used to make a buck.