Posted on 12/06/2012 7:20:37 PM PST by ExxonPatrolUs
Commode, can, the Oval Office, and the Super Bowl. Throne, pot, loo, John. The royal flush.
The toilet, in its illustrious career, has earned a variety of affectionate nicknames. But variety extends well beyond just puns when talking about those porcelain perches: Eco- friendly options, from low-flow to entirely waterless toilets, are an important part of bringing water sustainability into homes. Toilet flushes account for about 30 percent of in-home water usage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Toilets consume more water in American homes than any other individual type of appliance, such as showers, dishwashers, and washing machines.
And with climate change, drought and demand straining fresh water resources, methods of decreasing water consumption are increasingly important to environmentalists and policy-makers. “It’s easy to think that we have this enormous indispensable water supply, that we do have about 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water right here at the Great Lakes,” said Nancy Tuchman, an aquatic ecology researcher and director of the Institute of Urban Environmental Sustainability at Loyal University.
"We have the biggest supply on the continent, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be there forever – and especially with global climate change and all this evaporation and little precipitation that could build the water back up. So we need to conserve.” Studies show that Great Lakes water levels are dropping toward record lows.
Toilet Alternatives
One radical toilet-based solution takes water out of the equation altogether. A so-called “dry toilet” can begin as little more than a bucket filled with a layer of a carbon-rich material such as dry leaves, sawdust or newspaper. “For five bucks, or if I find a bucket and have some carbon material, I can actually build out a solution really fast,” said Nancy Klehm, who founded a Chicago-based eco-solutions company, Social Ecologies, in 2010. “It takes hardly any capital; it just takes some ingenuity and knowing what to do with it.”
After a visit to the dry toilet, users cover their wastes with a new layer of carbon- rich material. Once the bucket is full, the contents can be dumped out and composted.
Klehm organized a dry toilet trial-run for a group of 22 Chicagoans from 2008 to 2010, and she continues to work with dry toilets and composting today. For the aptly dubbed "Humble Pile" program, she collected waste from participants for a three- month period, and then composted it with more carbon-rich material for two years. “People were really surprised by how much they liked dry toilets,” she said. Participants in the aptly dubbed “Humble Pile” program liked the fact that the toilets were quiet and mobile, and that the toilets could be designed ergonomically. Most of all, they were pleasantly surprised that the toilets didn’t smell.
It's important that anyone considering a dry toilet understand how to handle the waste. "People can generally compost anywhere at anytime," Klehm said. "They just need to do it well so not to present a nuisance or attract animals."
When dealing with the dry toilet waste rather than food or landscape waste, it is important to kill pathogens from the human body by composting at high temperature created by heat-generating microbes. "Composting human waste should not be taken on unless someone is a very skilled composter," Klehm said. When done correctly, though, microbial digestion should naturally turn waste to soil and the process should be odor-free.
After the two year "Humble Pile" composting period that Klehm took on for the participants, she returned the compost to its original owners, which she said grew participant’s appreciation for dry toilets even more. “They were really excited that they were building soil," she said. “It’s a larger issue than just how much water we’re using,” explained sustainable water expert Wendy Pabich, who holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “When you buy a dry compost toilet, that’s all about recycling the nutrients and carbon in our waste, rather than sending them to rivers where the organic and nutrient load drive putrefaction – algal groves, fish kills and ecosystem changes.”
Dry toilets probably aren’t for everybody. “The ‘yuk’ factor is definitely there,” but that reaction is largely a cultural bias, Pabich said. She added that commercially produced dry toilets have eliminated many of the un- pleasantries consumers might expect. But there are many other, more conventional toilet options for people looking to lessen their lavatory’s environmental impact.
If every American home were to swap out old toilets for new, water efficiency- certified toilets, the EPA estimates that it would collectively save 640 billion gallons of water every year – equivalent to two week’s flow over Niagara Falls.
Toilets from before 1980 can use up to 7 gallons of water per flush, but federal regulations require that new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush. Simply by replacing old toilets, people can dramatically reduce their water consumption. And new dual-flush toilets (with one setting for wet wastes and one for solids] or low-flow toilets), marked with an EPA WaterSense label, are certified to use at least 20 percent less water than that national baseline.
A water-efficient home
In her recent book, “Taking on Water,” Pabich shared her personal experience renovating her entire home to be more water-efficient. The process involved installing meters on every water-consuming element of the house, analyzing the results, and devising ways to minimize water consumption. She chose the low-flow toilets, for instance.
Improving water sustainability at home need not be so involved for everyone, though. “I don’t think people need to go through all the effort I went through, nor to the level of analysis and understanding,” Pabich said. Instead, they can focus on a few core changes that Pablich shared in the form of a “Water Cheat Sheet” when she spoke at Chicago Ideas Week in October.
Some changes are a matter of updating home hardware. Pabich switched out her hold toilets and self-installed low-flow alternatives. “It’s not very hard, and it’s not very expensive,” she said. Toilets, though, are only a piece of the puzzle. The cheat sheet prescribes other improvements such as water-efficient washing machines and dishwashers.
Other conservation measures
requires behavioral changes, though. From eating less meat (livestock consume an enormous amount of water) to turning off the shower while lathering, small adjustments in daily routines add up. Turn off the sink while you brush your teeth, and don’t run your dishwasher until it’s full. “One thing that’s become really clear to me is the impact of our aggregate decision- making,” Pabich said. If each one of us does something to reduce our direct water use or our larger water footprint, by eating less meat or replacing our toilets, the collective impact is significant.”
The big picture: water pricing
Though individual choices have major impacts on water conservation, achieving long-term sustainability will require top-down policy changes too.
“There are clearly some major structural problems,” Pabich said. “Water is entirely underpriced, and the second that price signal is corrected I think things will dramatically change.”
Bill Christiansen, program planner for the Chicago-based Alliance for Water Efficiency, agreed. “Here in Chicago, the water rates are very reasonable, so that’s probably not going to be a motivator for lots of people.”
The city of Chicago will charge $2.89 per 1,000 gallons of water beginning Jan. 1, 2013, up from $2.51 this year. The rate is scheduled to increase again for 2014 and 2015 in increments of 15 percent. Sewer rates will be at 92 percent of water bills for 2013, but will hit 100 percent in 2015. “I think the public will be most interested in water efficiency when the need is more urgent,” Christiansen said.
People such as Klehm and Pabich promote water-efficiency initiatives, but it will take a concerted effort of people to achieve all the necessary changes.
“It requires another level of involvement in your home,” Klehm said. “So your home is not just this passive space that you retreat into at the end of the night with your carryout Chinese food and pop in a Netflix movie.”
“You have to watch the flows of all the different things that are coming into and out of your house. And there aren’t a lot of people who want to have that level of engagement in their homes.”
This is so SILLY. There IS NOT any SUCH THING as a “shortage” of water. If you needed water, you could order a pallet load of bottled water from Iceland delivered by FEDEX overnight. You can have all the water you want to purchase, just about anywhere on earth.
There is only a shortage of the money, or the will to spend the money, to have sufficient water of sufficient quality delivered to the user.
Why is this so hard to grasp?
It was not directed at you, sorry if you felt it was. it was at the people who designed and built the faulty product.
I have no idea where the 1.6 toilet came from that I personally replaced with the 5 GPF unit. It was installed before we bought the house (although not long before. the bathroom was a compete remodel before it was put on the market). I might have worked better if they replaced the run in the basement but with our septic the sewer line does not exit the house at floor level in the basement. It’s about 4 feet up. That does not help with the slope of the drain pipe either.
It is silly that you think that price doesn’t matter, especially when it comes to the costs of routine life, electricity, water, food.
Why do you think that people go to such great lengths on an individual basis to save water, why do you think that people in rainless climates landscape with the cost of water as the primary concern?
In Southern California we don’t have the grass yards of my hometown of Houston, many yards are deliberately covered with rocks or some desert friendly covering, anything to avoid the cost of water.
I think that you are probably the most clueless poster I have seen here in years and that you don’t have any knowledge about anything regarding water or even normal life. Anyone who doesn’t think that cost matters in regards to water and sewage, is a moron, even Barbara Streisand who spends about %23,000.00 a year on water at her house, is probably aware that many people can’t, and don’t want to spend that money annually.
You sound like a typical liberal, solar and desalinated water before the market can make them affordable, because money is no object to a lefty idiot who can afford to import bottled water to wash his blue jeans and flush his toilets.
Think roughly 1/8th to 1/4 inch fall per foot as correct, in general, that looks almost flat to the normal person.
I use my RO wastewater for most of the freshwater tanks. The plants and fish prefer hard water so this is perfect.
Spent plenty of time in the area to know it is a desert. They get their water from the Colorado River basin ~ and a little further North they can get water from the Aquaduct.
I even know personally the first regular employee of the California Water Authority (to wit, the Aquaduct) whose job was to run up and down a long segment and reset valves.
Just what is it you want to know about water in California ~ 'cause you sure don't sound like you have the slightest idea about it.
If you read my posts again, you will see that I was supporting your position.
Sorry, you need to make that instantly clear ~ i’ve been busy at a julbord today snacking on every way you can find to eat lots and lots and lots of salmon ~ first, avoid the mackeral ~
It use to drupe due to the house sinking.. I fixed that. The run is 25 feet and has a total drop of 2”.. I have looked and looked at it and with out putting the turd catcher on a step, that is about as good as it’s gonna get.
I didn’t have fresh water ;) Reef shop only.
Is it 4” pipe, cast iron?
“It is silly that you think that price doesn’t matter, especially when it comes to the costs of routine life, electricity, water, food.”
Of course price matters, but the entire thread had been about the shortage of MONEY that people are willing to allocate to gaining access to sufficient water of suitable quality. However, the shortage of MONEY has been called a shortage of water!
In truth, there is no place on earth that water cannot be provided to. It is only a matter of cost, for money can buy the equipment and manpower to facilitate the provisions. Part of the reason it can cost $1 million a year to keep a single soldier in a forward base in Afghanistan is because of the pallet loads of water that the military hauls by multiple air cargo hops and then makes final delivery by a helicopter escorted by Cobra gun ships.
Indeed, while water is carefully managed on the ISS, the crew can have as much as they want. It costs ten thousand of dollars a pound to haul it up there. [1] But like any other person who has the costs of routine life, electricity, water, food to allocate from their finite income, the cost of water forces people to make decisions about use and priority. The ISS is no different.
Indeed, where government distorts the costs of water, it can cause massive mis-allocation of capital and activity. This is part of the legacy of water rights in the western US. I live in the central US and at this very moment the public debate about water management is about how many millions of gallons a second should the Missouri River be allowed to flush into the Mississippi River. In most years, the Missouri is managed by flushing sufficient water into it so it is deep enough to run barge traffic for a certain number of months. This year parts of the Mississippi are almost too low for barge traffic. At St. Louis, that river is normally about a mile wide and it flows faster than you can walk.
If water was in “shortage” we would be running millions of truckloads of that water to the rest of the country. But that costs too much! Simple economics dictates that less expensive sources be exploited first. Again, the root issue is cost not availability.
Indeed, since the oceans are as full as ever, there literally cannot be a shortage of water, ever.
[1] http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-launch-costs.htm
Having a hard time with salt. Finally sdet up a copper system for fish.
Wow, read post 120. You post like a troll out to waste everyone’s time.
I had a water efficient washing machine. It did not get the clothes clean, malfunctioned frequently, and ate clothes. Never again.
Give me an old top loading machine without a computer in it. They work.
let me know if you have any other troubles with um. I had a death rate of less than 2% in my systems. Copper is one way to help keep the rate down.
I still have some contacts in the trade to if your wondering about suppliers for things you can’t find.
Do you sell coral? probably already know but keep the coral and inverts out of the copper systems.
I read post #120. It proves my point exactly. This issue is the cost of the water, and any “shortage” is imposed only due to the inability or unwillingness to spend sufficient money.
If resisting silly ideas is being a “troll” then so be it. If there is any time-wasting going on here is with people who put up signs at hotels next to the ocean that plead for me to save water, and who write government regulations and policy based on the specious idea that I am better off when I don’t “waste” water that I would otherwise be happy to purchase with my own money.
Amazing.
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