A Green Blog (by DeBass Recycling)

The average person will flush their toilet 140,000 times in their lifetime. Now consider the average toilet can use up to 7 gallons of water per flush - that’s a whole lot of water that gets used over our lifetime. Combine that with the billions of flushes that occur every day around the world and you can quickly see how your toilet impacts the environment. And with global warming, water shortages will only get worse. But inefficient toilets do more than just reduce our lovely natural resource - water - they pose a second, natural problem - waste.

Every day in the USA 1 million miles of sewer pipes carry 50 trillion gallons of waste to 20 thousand sewage treatment plants. The sludge left over from these plants could be used as a good safe fertilizer, but when combined with the harmful chemicals used in the sewage industry we can only dump this sludge into landfills.*

*This calls for a little background history… Years ago, the government used to advise us to flush old prescriptions and pills down the toilet. What they found over time however, is that these pills when mixed in with sludge, caused the bacteria in the sludge to mutate and become resistant to antibiotics. As a result, sludge companies started adding chemicals to the sludge to kill these mutant bacteria.

SOLUTION:

So what can you do? Well there’s 2 things.

1. Reduce Your Water Use

Toilets made before 1994 can use up to 5 times more water than newer models and therefore have a terrible impact on our water resources and your water bill. Make sure you replace them with low-flow, high efficiency toilets. And if you really want to make a difference, you could even consider purchasing a composting toilet which will take you completely off the water grid altogether. These toilets run off electricity, use much less water (0.13 gallons per flush), and transfer the waste directly to an underground composting tank to be used for great fertilization. And the best thing about it… is that it’s completely odorless and only needs to be emptied 2 times a year. The price? $2,000 vs. the average $20,000 septic tank system.

2. Fight for Greener Sludge Control

Press your local government to find more earth-friendly ways to take care of the sludge in your city. For example: in Utah, they actually burn their sludge to kill off the harmful bacteria. The good thing about this is that it releases the same amount of CO2 into the air that would be released if the sludge just sat over time in a landfill.

YOUR IMPACT (The Math):

Regular toilet = 7 gallons per flush

Low-flow toilet = 1.6 gallons per flush

Average person = 5 flushes a day

RESULT: 27 gallons of water saved a day (or 788,400 gallons of water saved over a lifetime)

26 billions rolls of virgin toilet paper are sold every year in USA. This means of the 111+ million US households, the average household uses 234 rolls of toilet tissue per year - or rather, 1 whole tree.

Replacing just one roll of virgin toilet tissue with one roll of 100% recycled toilet tissue per household would leave 444,000 trees standing.

YOUR IMPACT (The Math):

One person = 1.7 virgin rolls per week

1 roll of 100% recycled toilet tissue = .004 trees saved

One person = .007 trees saved a week (or 15 trees saved per year)

Did you know that not all cotton balls are the same? In fact, some cotton balls actually contain polyester. Polyester production uses 67% more energy than cotton production. So be sure to check that the ones you buy are actually made from cotton and consider buying organic cotton balls. These are made without bleaching – making it better for you and the environment.

Those pretty plastic contains used to hold bath salts and bubble bath add up over time. So instead, try buying concentrated bubble bath. Doing so can save ¼ lb of plastic a year. In fact, If just 100 households in the US decreased their use of plastic this way – the savings would total 250,000 lbs of plastic.

Did you know that gel shave creams contain propellant (or oil)? They do. In fact, if just 10% of the households in the US stopped using gel shave creams, it would save enough oil to power 25 thousand homes.

SOLUTION: Save money and resources and go old school – use a soap and brush.