Environmentally Friendly Toilets for Your Home? Yes, There Are!
BY MET Plumbing LLC | January 20, 2020
Whether a home has one shared bathroom or multiple bathrooms, toilets are an indispensable component. Their primary function is to provide a safe means of disposing human waste. However, traditional toilets have a tendency to consume excessive amounts of water. For instance, older models use six gallons of water per flush, resulting in a wasteful process.
To illustrate, consider a household of four individuals who, on average, flush the toilet six times per day. This means that in a single day, they use 24 flushes and 144 gallons of water simply to attend to their bathroom needs. If the family were to switch to environmentally friendly toilets that only use 1.6 gallons per flush, they could substantially reduce their water consumption and help conserve water resources.
By installing new eco-friendly and water-saving toilets, the household of four now only requires 38.4 gallons of water per day to flush their toilets. This results in a significant reduction of 105.6 gallons of water usage. Over the course of a year, this simple switch would allow the family to conserve and save a total of 37,171.2 gallons of water. Additionally, they would also notice a substantial decrease in their monthly water bill due to their reduced water usage.
Now, let’s extend this idea to a small subdivision comprising of 24 homes. If each home were using an average of 144 gallons of water per day to flush their toilets, then the entire community could potentially conserve and save 892,108.8 gallons of water every year by upgrading to new low-flush toilets.
Other Eco-Friendly Toilet Options
Low-flow dual flush toilets are an even better water-saving option, as they use minimal amounts of water. These toilets have two separate flush buttons – one for liquid waste and the other for solid waste. The liquid waste flush utilizes only 0.8 gallons of water, while the solid waste flush uses 1.6 gallons of water.
Pro Tip: If you already have a conventional toilet, you can convert it to a dual flush toilet by having a plumber install a dual-flush control.
For even more water savings, consider opting for toilets with the WaterSense label. These toilets meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) requirements for low-flush/low-flow toilets and use 20% less water than standard 1.6-gallon flush toilets.
To maximize your water savings, you can also combine a WaterSense toilet with a dual flush control. This would enable you to use only 1.28 gallons of water for solid waste flushes and a mere 0.64 gallons of water for liquid waste flushes.
Fun Fact: According to the EPA’s estimates, if all homes in the US replaced their wasteful toilets with WaterSense models, it would result in an impressive water conservation of 520 billion gallons annually, equivalent to filling 10.4 billion garden-sized bathtubs!
You can further save water by converting the lid of your toilet’s tank into a small sink. When you flush the toilet, fresh water comes out of the faucet so that you can wash your hands before it drains into the tank on the back of the toilet. Conversion kits are available to add this feature to existing toilets.
For more information about eco-friendly, water-saving toilets for your home, don’t hesitate to contact MET Plumbing & Air Conditioning at 281-603-9949 today!