"BAAAAA-WOOOOOSH.....now that's a MAN'S flush, Bud."
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.”
ALL water is recycled. It gets taken from the environment, used, returned to the environment, evaporated, and returned as rain. It’s been doing this for billions of years. No amount of toilet conservation will ever change this. It is the ultimate in “sustainability”. These people are absolutely nuts.
“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.”
Hopefully they can recycle their OCD meds properly by growing their own “organic” zucchini.
It's ugly as heck, and hard to keep clean and working. I make parts to keep it working.
I'll die before I give it up.
/johnny
True enough you can run a sewer system with just salt water, but you need special equipment to handle it ~
“cover their wastes with a new layer of carbon- rich material. Once the bucket is full, the contents can be dumped out and composted.”
This is ridiculous. All this is is re-hashing the old days.
Which proves beyond doubt all these EnviroNAZIs want is to punt us back to the stone age. Or Moslem society, whichever.
"BAAAAA-WOOOOOSH.....now that's a MAN'S flush, Bud."
Now we will require every resident to treat his own sewage in his back yard (or front yard if he doesn't have a back yard), without using water.
What could possibly go wrong?
Theoretically they save water. Realistically I have to flush mine sometimes as many as four times to get just one square of toilet paper to go down the drain.
I was speaking of the low flow variety. Forgot to mention that. I wouldn’t even think of using a no flow dry one.
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”
Barbra Streisand. Swaying the fools out there saying “7 gal” which is OLD toilets. My parents have 3-gal toilets, and lo and behold to this day 40 years later they STILL flush even gigantic loads of (x) and toilet paper in 1 flush.
Meanwhile we have to constantly have our plunger at the ready for all 4 of our “eco” toilets (3 brands, 2 types). Even when we don’t use that we need to flush almost always 2x for just a bit of TP.
That’s 3 gal vs. 3.2 gal per “visit”.
Looks that way. They won't be happy until everyone else is living in the 7th century. I suspect that this is an aspect of outcome-based education... that these folks are convinced that it's a zero-sum world. Therefore, in order for these elitists to live in their accustomed and deserved luxury (because they care), the rest of the planet must squat over a hole and wipe with leaves and rocks.
How absolutely fitting that something churned out by Medill would pertain to the crapper.
The irony is that trains and planes have “no-water” toilets which are VERY powerful. However, I don’t know just how much “energy” we “waste” making that work OK. Kind of like the damnable asshats who say all we need to do for our lo-flows of 1.6 is get an electric assist!
You can’t have it both ways.
Screw them!!!
I still use 30 year old toilets that work with the first flush, no matter what!!!
What sort of culture is this woman espousing?
I rather like the culture that gave me a flush toilet and reliable potable water.
This woman wants "dry toilets" for everybody and expects that all users will assiduously compost their waste in such a way that all microbes will be destroyed. Not a chance. People can't even be expected to stay off the phone or keep from reading a term paper when driving (yeah, I saw this on my way home this evening!) so how can they be expected to take care of their own waste in such a way that it doesn't jeopardize local health? People can't see beyond the backlit screen of the smartphone in front of their noses, you think they care about an amoebic menace lurking in local topsoil courtesy of the human body?
There was a nice paper published about 20 years ago about SF Bay Area groundwater. Think about how groundwater is a real resource. Don't jeopardize it.
Just dig a hole for an outhouse in the back yard!
when full move it over to a new hole a few feet away! No water involved.
I started life using one of those and was afraid I would fall in the big hole. My uncle got bit on his thingydo by a spider in one.
I was rather Texas with that... wasn't I?
/johnny
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