Green Space: Stop flushing water -- and money -- down the toilet

There's no real delicate way to talk about toilets, is there? But we can up the maturity ante in exchange for information on water reduction, right?  Thanks.

Traditional toilets are water wasters bar none. Environmentalism 1.0 recommended bricks in the water tank to reduce the water used per flush -- remember that?

Well, if you have an older toilet and are not in the market to replace it (or have a stingy landlord), then that is still a viable option. One of my favorite environmental reads, Ask Umbra over at Grist, has collected some other creative small investment toilet improvements here.

If, however, you are ready to take a more serious plunge (pun intended), you have several options to consider. There are many examples of high-efficiency toilets on the market that use approximately half the water per flush than most toilets manufactured before the early-nineties.

But that 1.6 gallons-per-flush can be reduced even more with the use of a dual flush toilet, which offers the user two selections -- for Number 1, the toilet uses just 0.8 gallons per flush.

I don't know many homes with urinals, but there are a few out there. In any event, there are cool stander-uppers on the market that are billed as no-flush, which is kind of a misnomer; they still use water, just less than their old-school brother (say, a pint per pee as compared to a gallon).

If you are prepared to take this thing as far as it can go, consider a composting toilet. Basically, waste is transformed into a humus-like product that collects in a trap of sorts that is emptied once or twice a year. Check out the EPA's fact sheet here.

Happy flushing!

Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh