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When it comes to public restrooms, we dudes have long been aware of the advantages we enjoy: shorter lines and not having to touch any of the bathroom’s actual hardware being two standouts. But now we can add a third to that self-righteous list: while urinals have always used less water than conventional toilets, a new line of super-low-flow urinals from Zurn is taking those savings to a whole new level. Instead of wasting nearly a gallon per flush, Zurn’s ultra-low-consumption line come in both pint-flush models and entirely waterless models — a savings of about 30,000 gallons per urinal, per year. (Seeing as how more than a billion people in the world don’t have regular access to clean water, that sounds like a pretty good thing.)
i’ve seen a few of these waterless urinals in action, and honestly can’t see any disadvantage to using them. Given the potential monetary savings businesses would enjoy from lower water bills (not to mention that warm, fuzzy, helping-the-Earth feeling), why aren’t these everywhere now? In Los Angeles, at least, they’re definitely not common — how about in your town?
Link via Ecogeek.
Comments (17)
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Believe or not, most people in the USA do NOT live in a desert or under serious threat of water shortage. There are many of us who live in places with TONS of fresh water in the Great Lakes and/or raining down upon us every other day.
It annoys me that I am forced to buy really expensive toilets that don’t flush well and showerheads that spray in a trickle because a bunch of numbnuts decide that Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles are smart places to live. Just charge people like crazy for water (i.e. what it really costs — those dams and aqueducts cost big bucks) in those areas and let the markets decide. You’d see a lot fewer suburban Phoenix homes with golf-course lawns, and the rest of us could go back to living efficiently with inexpensive 3 gallon per flush toilets that work well.
posted by Sid Morrison on 2-5-2008 at 8:31 am
I was in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa over Christmas (amazing museum, by the way) and saw these no-flush urinals for the first time. They seemed to work really well and had less smell than the conventional ones.
posted by Graham on 2-5-2008 at 8:43 am
A new building for Jacksonville State University is actually being built green. One of the things the program coordinator is really jazzed about is that they have the waterless urinals. It’s actually a pretty cool system.
posted by Jennifer on 2-5-2008 at 8:56 am
Count me in as a low-flow toilet hater. Sometimes you have to [ahem] flush twice, which defeats the purpose, no?
It would be better if people would embrace green architecture and building, and install grey-water systems whenever and wherever they can. That way, the grody water from your shower and washing machine would be collected and re-used for things that don’t really need fresh water at all, such as your toilet.
posted by Rachel on 2-5-2008 at 8:56 am
Oh, and Sid Morrison, if you haven’t noticed on the news in the past year, a lot of areas around the nation that have ALWAYS been blessed with lots of water are suddenly finding themselves in extreme drought conditions and having to worry about water – just look at the South. I’ve never even considered worrying about water usage until last year when all of a sudden springs started running dry near the area where I live. There’s actually a town only a few hours north of me that has to have water trucked in once a day because their water sources are completely gone and it’s just because of two years with little to no rain.
posted by Jennifer on 2-5-2008 at 8:59 am
They converted every bathroom here at work to no-flush urinals about three years ago. While I didn’t really notice anything different about the smell, one HUGE difference is the splatter. Normally, you can aim for the water at the bottom of the urinal to minimize splatter, but that’s not an option here. After several messy experiments, I finally found the proper angle to minimize splatter.
posted by Jim on 2-5-2008 at 9:07 am
Maybe we could ship our pee to people without regular access to water!
:D
On a more serious note, the Great Lakes are not an endless supply of water. It LOOKS like there is a lot of water there, but it isn’t supplied by a spring. Most of the water was left there by the glaciers retreating and that is a non-renewable source. All water that is taken out of the Great Lakes has to be replenished. Pretty much, every gallon of water in the Great Lakes is spoken for.
Right now, there are huge arguments among the Great Lakes states about who is taking too much water out, etc. Decades of negotiations have been going into this. One of the big problems: bottled water being removed from underground streams that is lowering the Great Lakes because the water in the Great Lakes has to replenish those underground streams in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, etc.
That water is going to places like Arizona, California and all over the world. We’re already shipping water out of the Great Lakes to everybody!
We don’t want the Great Lakes to end up like the Aral Sea!
posted by Moon on 2-5-2008 at 9:42 am
@Moon-
Yes, I am aware that water sourcing from the Great Lakes is a contentious issue, but it’s really quite puny compared to the mayhem that is wreaked when people are subsidized (via artificially cheap water) to live in deserts. Folks who want to live in deserts like those I mentioned should be free ot do so, but those of us in the Northeast and Rust Belt should understand that we are financing a foolish large scale migration into places that really are not fit for large scale cities. Cheap water is considered “a basic right” for desert-dwellers and the rest of us suffer to bring them it at prices well below what it really costs. No matter Las Vegas & Phoenix (each in building booms) waste it like silly planting temperate-climate landscapes everywhere — take a look at how ambient humidity levels how risen there over the past 30 years! It’s no longer a “dry heat” and it’s because of all the golf courses and homeowners that like to keep their pretty New England landscapes. Desert-dwellers don’t see the true costs of the water, so they have no incentive to conserve and they keep moving there in greater numbers. If they did pay what the water truly cost, they would xeriscape (low water plants like cacti) and be fanatical about saving water. Instead, they pressure the Feds into getting cheap water and force the rest of us into using draconian water-Nazi plumbing fixtures.
Stop subsidizing foolish internal migration through government sponsored cheap water, flood insurance, hurricane insurance, wild fire insurance, &c. Such meddlings distorts efficient markets. People should be free to live where they choose, but let them bear the full costs of the bad as well as the good. You like to live on the nice warm Gulf Coast? Super! Just don’t come to me hat in hand when your house blows away or whine that hurricane insurance costs too much. When is someone going to pipe me natural gas at below market cost so I can run my thermostat at 80F all winter? Should people in the Southwest pay taxes to have the Federal government come and plow my driveway in the winter? Bah.
Oh, Jennifer… Yeah, water can run dry in places. Droughts happen & they have for millenia (e.g. the Sphinx was formerly in a pretty verdant area). Deal with it (through responsible conservation) and move if necessary. That’s what people have done through history. If you can’t adapt, move. Google “cistern”. You may find building one useful. Ditto for the grey water collection system Rachel mentioned.
Straight Talk from Sid.
PS – My 1950s toilets use water like crazy, but one flush works. Every time.
posted by Sid Morrison on 2-5-2008 at 12:08 pm
Ted’s Montana Grill, the bison steak place from Ted Turner, uses no flush urinals. I think they do so in all of their locations.
posted by Bison P? on 2-5-2008 at 12:42 pm
@Sid-
I live in an area with plentiful oil reserves and refining capability. Am I allowed to use your same logic for water in regards to oil and gasoline?
posted by Jason! on 2-5-2008 at 1:04 pm
@Jason! You do – it’s called pricing. See OPEC!
:D
posted by Moon on 2-5-2008 at 1:31 pm
The no-flushes are a great idea for places where there’s likely a bunch of guys going number one, like a bar or a sports stadium,or for new homes just being built, but I’m not sure if the savings would be worth it in a regular already built family home. It’s always bothered me that so much water gets literally flushed down the toilet, but I don’t know that adding one to my existing house would be cost effective. I’m all about being environmental when I can, even paying a little bit more, but I’m a realist,too. I can’t see adding one of those as a viable option financially for most families.
I wish there was a convenient way to switch where in your house water goes,too. It makes sense for used dirty toilet water to go into the sewer, but why does my fairly clean bathwater and laundry machine water have to go there automatically? Sure, I don’t want to drink a glass of it or cook with it, but it would be awesome if there was some sort of switch I could add to my plumbing that would let me select where it goes and I could choose to have it reused for something like toilet flushing or washing the car.
posted by Melissa on 2-5-2008 at 1:56 pm
I never flush my pee.
If its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down.
live it; love it
posted by David on 2-5-2008 at 2:27 pm
Believe it or not, the Wal-mart Home Office in Bentonville, AR has recently installed waterless toilets. I have to say, they are pretty nice, and there’s a little bee you can aim at about 3/4 of the way down that offers an ideal angle of preventing splashback.
posted by Ben on 2-5-2008 at 3:03 pm
Melissa-
You ask for a solution to reusing gray water? There is one. It’s called a septic tank. I live in a fairly rural area of Oklahoma and have one. The nice result is I never have to water my lawn and it stays nice and green all summer long.
posted by Anthony on 2-5-2008 at 5:33 pm
@Jason-
Absolutely! Indeed, there IS regional variation in the price of fuel on account of access to ports, pipelines, refineries, as well as state government regulations that mandate certain fuel content. As it turns out, I happen to actually live in one of the areas of the country that has highest gasoline costs. I don’t expect you (in apparently a cheaper fuel area) to subsidize my prices to “level the playing field”. That would be stupid and would encourage inefficiency in markets. In deciding to live here, I have factored in high fuel costs, lots of snow, and high state taxes. But I balance that with a job I like, fairly low housing cost and proximity to family. When governments tinker with markets to encourage people to live in places that don’t make sense, you wind up packing people into areas without enough water and insufficient power generation. Or living on the banks of a portion of the Mississsippi that habitually overflows (but they know the Feds will bail them out again).
posted by Sid Morrison on 2-5-2008 at 11:37 pm
There is a viable solution to all that grey water and waste that doesn’t involve flushing water down the drain — it’s called COMPOSTING!!!
Yes, you can compost human waste… For details, I highly recommend a great book — The Humanure Handbook!
It also has great information on how to channel grey water into reservoirs off your property that can then recycle it naturally through plantlife.
And that’s a valid point about not wanting to install water-free urinals in your home. Other things get wasted in this world besides water, and the number of items used to produce urinals, toilets, etc. are amongst them. Live Green!
posted by Stacy on 2-8-2008 at 3:30 pm