Next to air, water is our most important necessity. Pure, safe, clean drinking water is something we almost take for granted. But very little of it is used for drinking or cooking.
The biggest water user in the house may surprise you (flush). Yes, it's your toilet. Old toilets take five gallons of water to flush, and while more efficient toilets have become the standard, and the law in new construction, there are still lots of water hogs out there in older homes. And even worse, there are lots of leaky toilets that need little more than a new flapper valve to end that constant trickle of waste.
If you have an old toilet, consider buying a new water efficient model, or at least put a couple of water filled half gallon containers in the toilet to reduce the amount of water used in each flush. When we get ready to shower, we run the warm-up water into a bucket, and use that to flush. Just pour it quickly right into the bowl, and it will flush. There's no need to pour it into the tank first.
We're fortunate to have a state-of-the-art sewage treatment facility that captures most of the methane generated in the treatment process. But reducing the load on the system by cutting back on flush water would make the process even more efficient.
If you want to make your toilet - and all your household water use - more efficient, consider joining in the education celebration of World Toilet Day on November 19th 6-8 p.m. at Whirled Pies in downtown Eugene. Along with toilet trivia, you'll learn about grey water diversion techniques, the use of urine-based fertilizers - it's already common in Europe - and composting toilets.
With toilets using almost a third of the water in many households, it's time to reduce the waste of water used to get rid of our waste.
I'm John Fischer with Living Less Unsustainably.
