There are solutions that help you save water by requiring you to flush only when taking a dump (by preventing pee from smelling and hiding it). I don't remember the exact products.
New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
141–150 of 156 posts
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raw sewage probably isn’t that great for fish either.
Raw sewage is well known to decompose in the environment into harmless things. Unlike the majority of chemicals we invented in the last 100 years or so.
Errr.....no? Human waste in water is a major cause of disease. Sure, a turd or two won't be a problem. And sure, it'll decompose. But all kinds of pathogens remain. There are billions of people, and as the eponymous book says: everyone poops.
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#143Hi 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 may be a little broad of a question, but:
Why is this being commercialized at all?
The linked article makes a lot of noise about benefits for the developing world but making the coating tool dependent on the profit motive will naturally target those with existing money - the developed world.
I'm just having a hard time squaring this particular circle.
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#144Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raw sewage is well known to decompose in the environment into harmless things. Unlike the majority of chemicals we invented in the last 100 years or so.
Errr.....no? Human waste in water is a major cause of disease. Sure, a turd or two won't be a problem. And sure, it'll decompose. But all kinds of pathogens remain. There are billions of people, and as the eponymous book says: everyone poops.
People have been pooping for millions of years without filling our oceans with poop. We have been creating new chemicals for a hundred years and have created a huge waste problem. The last time pooping had a big impact on the global ecosystem was during the Great Oxygenation Event, afaik.
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#146Why don't we use grey water to flush toilets? It can use water either from the bathroom sink or shower.
Honestly, I do. I've placed a bucket in the sink to capture waste water from washing hands, which is then reused for flushing the toilet after depositing... liquid contents in it. It saves a bit off the water bill and also made me realize just how much water I use up when washing hands... Of course I hide the bucket when guests come, it's too weird a thing - but in all honesty, I've wished many times for a system for…
Here in Belgium it is mandatory (for quite some years) with every new building development to install a tank capturing rain water from the roof. This water must be used for flushing toilets and you typically also use it to water the garden, wash your car, etc. With some extra (carbon) filters people also use it for their washing machine.
I have a 10000L tank which is more than sufficient for a household of 4 and some garden. The minimum size is calculated based on your roof surface but normally people install a bigger tank. The extra cost for a few 1000L more really isn't that much and it can save you the cost of a fallback system in case the tank runs dry.
The overflow of the tank goes to a separate sewage system that usually ends in a local stream. This way it doesn't dilute the actual grey/black water which, incidentally, makes a water treatment plant more effective (or so they say). It also allows the water to infiltrate into the ground and there's less risk of flooding the streets during a downpour. At least, this is the theory. Work is still very much in progress to split the sewage systems but we're getting there.
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, they're often combined, on the basis that it's easier to measure water usage than sewer usage and the latter is presumed to be proportional to the former.
So when people say "my water bill is higher than $X", do they mean the combined bill? Does the town I live in just have abnormally high water prices for an area without water scarcity, or is water just artificially cheap in other places?
Regarding the former - Yes. It's basically something like this:
line 1 - Water usage = X line 2 - Sewage usage = X * modifier
My monthly water usage is usually something like $20 worth, but my "water bill" is usually around $60-$65 when combining water + sewage (2 adults, $ = USD).
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I do. I've placed a bucket in the sink to capture waste water from washing hands, which is then reused for flushing the toilet after depositing... liquid contents in it. It saves a bit off the water bill and also made me realize just how much water I use up when washing hands... Of course I hide the bucket when guests come, it's too weird a thing - but in all honesty, I've wished many times for a system for…
As of now, very few buildings have separate grey and black water plumbing. In the event that you did have separate plumbing in the building, you would need separate plumbing in the street as well. Unless you live in a very water constrained area, it's pretty unlikely. In the US, plumbing for reclaimed water is available in some areas (purple pipes), and seems like an easier intervention, it's often used for landscape…
Can you irrigate with water that has detergents in it though?
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people have leaky toilette that they can easily fix to lower the impact of higher fees? vs. How many people are living on the margins and that extra $10 represents the last meal to get to the end of the month?
You are derailing the discussion - we were talking about the practicality of covering toilets with a slick substance while touting the water-saving potential of said act. To which I stated that instead of covering the toilet with that slick substance we'd save more if we made water a little more costly to dissuade people from wasting water on a large scale. Now all of a sudden that got turned into some poor family in…
No, you dismissed a techno-industrial solution by proposing to raise water prices instead.
I happen to agree that techno-industrial solutions are band-aids best addressed with social and self-growth.
However, your proposed method of social change is more complicated that you let on. People on the margins are not some hypothetical "poor family in an undisclosed location not being able to feed themselves because water is too expensive"
They are literally the set of marginal individuals, marginal as defined in Econ 201 (marginal rates, marginal profits ect). That is people who are not so poor that they are already skipping meals (or on food stamps), but they cannot save an extra $10/month either. At the end of the month the net change in their net value is zero.
If we expand the set to include people and families who are in the red or in the black by about $50/month, that includes millions of Americans. And, for these people, $10/month of added water bills hurts. A lot.
That's not to say raising prices is a bad idea. I happen to agree with it. I also happen to agree with raising gas taxes, levying road tolls, and, in general, attaching the externality cost to the first user as much as possible (I.e. the gas tax to transport the tomato you eat is paid by the shipping company whose job it is to find economic ways to ship).
However, I'm under no delusions that this tax scheme is regressive. Should the repressiveness be addressed or dismissed is another question.
Re: New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
#150Hi 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…
Have you tried looking into applications with training toilets for kids. The clean up on those things is horrible.