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A toilet-led water saving
Every time we flush a toilet, we pour up to 10 L of clean potable water down the drain. Over a year this adds up enormously.
At the SESL lab, we have taken a big step towards reducing our water use by installing a very simple product in our men’s toilet.
We conservatively estimated that our men’s urinal was consuming approximately 38 880 L per year of clean potable water just to flush away urine, which itself is mostly water. With the help of a firm called Waterless Urinal Systems of North Ryde, in Sydney, we selected a product called EcoBug. This comes as a small, green, waxy-looking block that sits in the base of the urinal. The block contains bacteria selected for their ability to break down the chemical components of urine before regular bacteria can get a toehold and create the familiar stench.
All we had to do was turn off the water! Once a week we clean the urinal and replace the EcoBug block. It’s really that simple.
We now conservatively estimate that our water consumption to operate the urinal has fallen to less than 1000 L a year – a saving of 37 944 L a year, or nearly 98%! Given that an average home swimming pool holds about this amount, this is a considerable amount of water that we are saving each year. Good for SESL and good for the environment.