On Household Water Consumption - Toilets

Let's get right to it - no one likes toilets.  We don't want to talk about them, we don't want to look at them, we hate cleaning them, and we wash our hands every time we touch one (for those of you who don't do this: http://tiny.cc/5z94bw).  However, for all of the crap the toilet catches (pun intended), one of it's greatest evils goes unnoticed: water consumption.  According to the American Water Works Association (AWWA) Research Foundation, toilet flushing accounts for 26.7% of all residential indoor water use.

Now, a standard toilet flushes 3.5 gallons per flush (gpf), but newer high-efficiency or "low-flow" toilets use 1.6 gallons or less per flush.  (If you're not sure how much water your toilet uses per flush, you should be able to find that information printed on the back of the bowl or elsewhere on your porcelain pedestal.)  The AWWA makes the assumption that the average person flushes 5 times per day, but let's get real; if a guy surveyed you on the sidewalk and asking how many times per day you flush, you'd probably low-ball him - you don't want people to think you're a freak!  With that said, we'll say the average person flushes 7 times per day (if they flush every time, but that's another story...).  Using a standard toilet, in a house with 4 inhabitants, that's 28 flushes per day.  (28 flushes/day)*(3.5 gallons/flush) = 98 gallons per day.  That's 35, 770 gallons of water in a year!  with the average price of water in the U.S. at $1.50 per 1,000 gallons, the household of 4 spends $53.66 on flushing toilets, IF the toilets never ever leak, but they do, so multiply that cost by 1.15 to account for leakage and you get $61.71.  I know that's not a lot of money on an annual basis, but by comparison, if the same household installed low-flow toilet, the cost would be a mere $28.21.

Here is one way to cut down on your toilet's gpf rating.  You'll need a container that can hold water and can fit in your toilet tank.  This container will also need to have some weight to it, just so it doen't float.  For the purposes of this example, i've selected a 16-ounce Mason jar.  The basic premise of this practice is simple: I save 16 ounces of water each time I flush.  Here's how you do it:

Water will fill your open container, but will not be drained
 out when the rest of the tank empties.

1. Open your toilet tank.

2. Submerge your container in the back of the toilet.  If you're using a container that floats, put something heavy in it (rocks, pennies, toaster [unplugged, of course]).

3. When you flush your toilet, your jar will remain filled with water, thus saving you exactly that much water per flush!


Granted, you're not going to save the world saving a pint of water every time you use the toilet, but let's do some math to show what impact this simple practice can have if it is implemented on a large scale.  If one person flushes the toilet 7 times per day, that person would save 0.875 gallons of water per day by installing a 16-ounce Mason jar conserver.  "WHOOP-TEE-DOO. Not even a full gallon!" you say.  In the same 4-person household discussed earlier, 1,278 gallons would be conserved on an annual basis.  If you take the U.S. population of 300 million, and assume everyone in the country practiced this conservation, that's...wait for it... 95.8 BILLION gallons of water we could save per year.