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New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

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Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#121

Post by robocat »

fireattack wrote: post #95
gpm wrote: post #14

500 flushes is less than a year for a toilet used twice a day (say before and after bed), I hope that coating is cheap, easy to apply, and doesn't create substantial pollution either as it is created or used. I hope the sewer system doesn't need to just add water as a result. Toilet water use doesn't seem like a big enough contributor to the problem that it's much use optimizing it in most places. But there are proba…

You only use toilet twice a day? Keep in mind you need to flush after pee too.

> Keep in mind you need to flush after pee too.

When you only have restricted water, you shouldn't flush after peeing. There's even a saying to help conserve water this way:

"If it's yellow, let it mellow".

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#122

Post by stfp »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #67
JaRail wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Regarding the environmental friendliness of our coatings: Our product is based on silicone. It has been shown in the scientific literature that silicone can be decomposed naturally in soil within 4-7 days. It breaks down in silica, water, and carbon dioxide. "Based on silicone" does not mean "degrades like silicone." It also doesn't mean your coating will behave like the silicone "in the scientific literature."…

I also have the same concerns about your product.

Likewise. At massive scale, conserving water by adding more artificial/industrial runoff doesn't seem like a good approach, at all. This version of the world is behind us.

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#123

Post by brentis »

birgitt wrote: post #15

Hi Everyone! Birgitt here from spotLESS Materials -- we are commercializing this technology and some of the authors of the Nature Sustainability paper are part of our team. I'll try answering some of the questions I'm seeing. Would love to hear your feedback! Check out our products at: https://www.spotlessmaterials.com/shop Check out the full research article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0421-0#ci…

So what about something like marble countertops?

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#124

Post by TheRealWatson »

safepants wrote: post #43
haklriueo wrote: post #28

> When we put that coating on a toilet in the lab and dump synthetic fecal matter on it This reminds me of a documentary about toilets, and one factoid was that American toilets were much worse at flushing than Japanese ones, and would block more frequently, and it turns out that American ones were tested with a small standardized rubber ball, while Japanese ones with the real deal, including big productions.

I watched a video from This Old House where they toured a toilet factory. They used Miso paste in a condom to simulate fecal matter.

"7 links of miso"... I remember that every time I buy sausage links. Gross haha.

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#125

Post by catalogia »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #120
catalogia wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The depth of the well is a huge factor, generally the deeper the well the harder it is to pump water out of it. There is also the matter of how fast the well will replentish. Shallow wells into unconfined aquifers in regions with plenty of rainfall are probably the best sort of wells. Those sort of wells get replenished every year (climate permitting.) On the other hand with fossil aquifers you're draining a finite a…

Works great until the farmer next door sucks your shallow well dry with his new irrigation system.

As I've been saying, the matter of fresh water is very local. You may or may not be near such a farmer, and such a farmer may or may not be capable of pumping that much fresh water out of the ground in the first place. In some places that's a real problem while in others it isn't.

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#126

Post by ac29 »

gpm wrote: post #66
HorizonXP wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree, but I (and maybe you) live in the Great Lakes region where water is abundant and cheap. Optimizing water use just doesn't seem worth it. But I can totally see this coating helping in regions like India, who have a real problem with open-air defecation.

I do live near the great lakes, but my comment about not worth optimizing is really just that as a percentage of global water usage toilets are tiny (compared to agricultural and industrial. Agricultural is 80-90% in the states for instance). Optimization only really makes much sense where locally that is false. There are definitely plenty of deserts in the world though, so it's not much of a nitpick.

> Agricultural is 80-90% in the states for instance

Actually, irrigation uses less than 40% of water in the US. The largest use is thermoelectric power generation. [0]

[0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3035/fs20183035.pdf

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#127

Post by rswail »

papreclip wrote: post #22

More chemical waste in our water system. There's nothing wrong with the amount of water we currently use to flush our toilets. Now, there's something to be said for a cleaner flush, but another solution to that problem - with many other benefits - is to consume more fiber

The US toilet design with the huge bowl of water is incredibly wasteful and inefficient and just not that good, compared to toilets in EU/AU/JP.

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#129

Post by adinisom »

birgitt wrote: post #15

Hi Everyone! Birgitt here from spotLESS Materials -- we are commercializing this technology and some of the authors of the Nature Sustainability paper are part of our team. I'll try answering some of the questions I'm seeing. Would love to hear your feedback! Check out our products at: https://www.spotlessmaterials.com/shop Check out the full research article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0421-0#ci…

This seems similar to SLIPS: https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/slips-slippery-liquid-in...

How do LESS and SLIPS compare?

Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water

#130

Post by Nextgrid »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #6

Reminds me of an old plumbing trick: got a really stuck toilet? Pour a little dish soap into the bowl. It makes everything slippery so dislodging debris is much easier.

Unfortunately I recently gained the experience to confirm that this does not work. It wasn’t even “really” stuck and yet the dish soap did nothing (nor chemical drain unblockers), only the good old plunger did the trick.
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