If You're Not In The "If It's Yellow Let it Mellow" Crowd: $150 Toilet Retrofit Will Save You Thousands of Gallons of Water!

In the bathroom in our bedroom, Laura and I generally stick to the "If it's yellow let is mellow, if it's brown flush is down" mantra. Instead of flushing the toilet, say 12-15 times a day, we only flush 4 or 5. At 1.6 gallons per flush, just doing this on one toilet saves us over 5000 gallons per year of water. We tend to flush the downstairs toilet regularly, as we don't want to gross out our guests, plus for some reason that bathroom has an uncanny amplification of smells (tmi, I know). Many people are uncomfortable with not flushing every time, especially in more public restrooms, and we've started to see some businesses install dual-flush toilets such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Now there is a solution for the home! Rather than replacing your entire toilet, Brondell is releasing the "Perfect Flush" retrofit that can be installed on nearly any standard home toilet and can save about 50% of the water you would normally use if you're an "everytime flusher." At $150, it's also affordable and looks to be fairly easy to install yourself. Although we should be seriously rethinking our water use in general, (ie: how much sense does it make to contaminate millions of gallons of water from showers, kitchens, washing machines, sinks, etc, with a few hundred gallons of blackwater?) this is an easy and affordable first step until you can get your composting toilets and greywater systems in place!

via Gizmodo.