Care2 had an interesting article the other day about the environmental impact of flushing toilets. Sure, we all know about low-flow toilets and how they save water, but this article pointed out just how MUCH water we use to flush our waste products every day. It's kind of mind blowing. According to the article, the average person uses 2,774 gallons of clean water per year to dispose of about 171 gallons of urine. Wow!
The writer notes,"We take about 1.6 gallons of good drinking water to flush 10 ounces of urine and toilet paper down the toilet. In doing so, the 1.6 gallons become undrinkable.
Next, the water must be routed to a wastewater cleaning facility where it is processed, usually with heavy chemicals like chlorine, then processed once more to remove the chemicals that were used to decontaminate it. Then it is dumped into the rivers and oceans. In other words, we take perfectly good drinking water, make it toxic and then doubly toxic, clean it and then dump it into the environment."
The author notes that most people urinate about 6 times a day, but only defecate once a day. If we only flushed that one time, the author says we could each save 2,190 gallons of drinking water every year.
Makes you think, eh? Read more on Care2: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/if-its-yellow-let-it-mellow-the-great-debate.html#ixzz1E91ImGgI
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