BDN MAINE SPECIAL SECTION • BANGORDAILYNEWS.COM • September 12-13, 2013
5
ENERGY WISE 2013
ROOM for conserving water, in a room FOR conserving water By Evan Kanarakis Five years ago here in the pages of Energy Wise I discussed one of the more obscure differences to be found between the United States and my native Australia since moving here in 2005. It involved, of all things, the toilet. In Australia, the driest inhabited continent in the world — with the lowest rainfall in the world except Antarctica — the importance of water conservation is always present. As a child in rural New South Wales I witnessed the devastating effects of drought firsthand, and there are few Australians who haven’t lived through drought-mandated water restrictions enforced by severe fines and over-usage penalties to place limits upon basic tasks like washing one’s car or watering the garden. Many local councils even offer incentives to households that switch to water-saving showerheads or garden hose rainwater tanks. And, for over 30 years, every new toilet in Australia has featured a two-button dual flush
system, first invented by Bruce Thompson of the Caroma company in 1980. There are two flush buttons: one atop the tank is for small-volume liquid flushes, while the other is for larger-volume, solid-waste flushes. The concept is simple enough — we simply don’t need a full cistern of water for every visit we make to the bathroom. True enough; for years prior to the innovation, it wasn’t uncommon to find water-conscious Australian homeowners with a brick or a bottle full of water placed at the bottom of their toilet tanks so as to displace and thus conserve water by allowing less volume released per flush. With the new Caroma toilets, this concept came into the modern era. They require no changes in existing plumbing to be installed (retrofitting kits generally cost less than $40) and look just like any other, save for two buttons at the top of the tank. The normal flush uses the standard 1.6 gallons (6 liters) of water, but the reduced flush uses half that — 0.8 gallons (3 liters).
Photo by Eugenio Hansen, OFS, via Wikipedia
One design for a two-button flush system.
As I was familiar with just how sensible and commonplace this technology has always been in Australia — and in Europe and Asia where they are now also widespread — I couldn’t be blamed for taking their existence in the United States for granted. Alas, for a country that has also experienced great suffering through drought, dual-flush technology is still, five years on since I first wrote on the subject, only slowly coming to the fore. There has been some headway made, however. Inconceivably, dual-flush toilets were once banned in New York City, but in 2010 the New York City Council
announced that all new buildings have to install them. This was a huge win for water conservation in such a major metropolitan center. Similarly, other local councils are now following the Australian model and introducing rebate programs to encourage homeowners to significantly decrease water demand in their community and, in turn, dramatically reduce their average water bill. American toilets today are more waterefficient than in the past, but dual-flush toilets are able to save a massive 67 percent of water compared to traditional models. They are also incredibly reliable, increasingly available, and only marginally more expensive than competing toilets. For the average American consumer looking to save money as well as maintain the future environmental sustainability of their country, there is only one clear choice. Many manufacturers now make dualflush toilets, with varying water usage. To learn more, you can visit the company that first invented them at CaromaUSA.com.