SVN3M -Water
Sparkling low-flush toilet saves water, saves power and – the saving grace – gets the job done
(Toronto Star, October 9, 2007)
Catherine Porter, Environment Reporter
(1) Yesterday, my green conscience was in the toilet. Mine was aged, leaky and often plugged up.After three years of plunging, wobbling and lifting the tank lid to slap down a rebellious flap, I finally chucked the sucker.I became a low-flusher.
(2) My new toilet is not only clean, firmly attached to the floor and leak free, it gulps just six litres of water per flush. With every push of the handle, I'll save 14 litres – more water than I drink in a day. And I could drink it, as it's treated just like water from the kitchen tap. Flushing five times a day – the statistical average for GTA residents – equals 70 needless litres down the drain the old way. Factor in my husband and we'll save 51,000 litres of water a year. That's around 638 showers or 268 brimming baths. Not bad for a $300 trip to Home Depot and an hour watching my plumber saw off the rusty bolts, heave the 20-year-old carcass to the curb and install its gleaming replacement.Thus the city's rebate program, which offers homeowners like me up to $75 to buy a new, water-efficient toilet. Toilets guzzle a third of a home's indoor water use.
(3) And that's not factoring in the electricity. The city has to suck all that water from the lake to a filtration plant, clean it, pump it to my house, then pump the flushed water to Ashbridge's Bay for treatment before returning it to the lake.In the summer, a lot of that energy is supplied by coal plants. According to one city report, every million litres of water pumped to our homes and businesses causes around 300 kilograms of carbon dioxide to be belched into the sky. So, in a year, my spanking new toilet will save the atmosphere from 15.3 kilograms of greenhouse gases — enough to drive all the way to Barrie in my Toyota.
(4) It's not only beautiful, it's an eco-warrior! But does it work?
Even an eco-convert doesn't relish having to unclog a stewing toilet. And double- or triple-flushing defeats the whole purpose...To be sure, I consulted the "Maximum Performance (MaP) Testing of Popular Models" report before my trip to Home Depot.It's the toilet bible, put out by Mississauga engineering firm Veritec. Since 2003, engineers have been dropping stool-like specimens made from soybean paste into low-flush toilets to test how they fare.The benchmark is 250 grams – the "average maximum fecal size" produced by a male, report the British doctors who study these things. In 2003, about half the models failed. Now, all but 14 of the 460 tested passed handily. More than 75 could suck down 1,000 grams of matter in one gulp. That's equivalent to 20 hot dogs.
(5) "Nobody would ever put that much waste in a toilet," says Bill Gauley, Veritec's lead engineer on the test program.
That's my toilet: a kilogram-sucking American Standard Cadet 3. I could invite a football team over for hamburgers and beer and not have cause to worry.The newer models are designed to make even less water do a lot more work, Gauley says. Bigger flappers give bigger gulps. Smoother funnels provide quicker flows. And the siphons have an extra cup, pushing more water down the shoot.In fact, they work so well, he's pushing regulators to raise the bar for water efficiency to 4.8 litres. "It's ridiculous to have a toilet that can flush 1,000 grams," Gauley says, adding that the toilets in his house use just half that.
All this means not only is my toilet green, but my conscience is clean.
Details on GTA toilet rebates are at: toronto.ca/watereff/flush/index.htm
In praise of the porcelain goddess(Toronto Star, October 9, 2007)
Toronto uses a lot of lake
The average Torontonian swallows about 248 litres of water a day just inside the home.
Here's the water bill:
Older shower heads spout out up to 30 litres of water per minute. The average shower is eight minutes long.
The average bathtub fills with less than 190 litres.
The average car wash uses 400 litres of water.
Lawn sprinklers use 10 to 35 litres of water a minute.
The average washing machine uses 170-190 litres of water a cycle.
The average dishwasher uses 40 to 55 litres of water a cycle.
Sources: City of Toronto, Greater Vancouver Regional District
Questions:
- How many litres of water did the writer’s old toilet use for every flush? (paragraph 2)
- Why would installing a low-flush toilet also save electricity? Why would this be important for the City of Toronto from a sustainability perspective? (paragraph 3)
- What is one previous objection or criticism of low-flush toilets from a water use perspective? (paragraph 4)
- Give 3 details about the testing and performance of low-flush toilets – include test material, benchmarks, test results. (paragraph 4)
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- What has the City of Toronto done to encourage the replacement of old toilets with low-flush toilets? (paragraph 2)