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Environment

Mayor Calls for Saving Water and Banning Wasteful Toilets

Posted by Eugene / July 13, 2007

6 Comments

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In an effort to save water, Mayor Miller is looking to get a bunch of cities to cut water use by 15% in seven years. To start with, he's asking the province to ban the sale of less efficient toilets that use three times more water than more eco-sensitive low-flush toilets.

21 cities around the Great Lakes, including Toronto, Chicago and Buffalo, have signed on the plan and eleven of these municipal governments have already started reducing water wastage.

Speaking of toilets, I finally saw one in a Toronto office that uses a totally brilliant but simple method of water savings - different water flushing amounts for different, uhm, toilet duties (or more scientifically, a full flush for poo, a half-flush for pee). I don't know why these half-flush toilets are not all over the city, especially in new homes and buildings.

There are a lot of other water saving techniques we should all be practicing, including giving dirty looks to those neighbours that are constantly cleaning/watering their sidewalks (they know who they are!).

Photo: stock.xchng

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james / July 13, 2007 at 10:31 am
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<p>In more advanced, civilized and environmentally friendly places of the world, they have those half-flush toilets everywhere. SO thats all of europe, mexico, the middle east. </p><p>Canadians are so self assured of their eco-friendliness, they are simply not aware of how&nbsp; much they fail. &nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;lets set some more goals for 2050 to start caring about the environment. &nbsp;</p>
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Rajio / July 13, 2007 at 11:59 am
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Dirty looks is the least of what you should be giving them.
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Tom / July 13, 2007 at 05:57 pm
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<p>I think the city should hand out fines to establishments who use watering hoses to clean the sidewalks.&nbsp; Resturants, hotels, they all do it.&nbsp; I hate seeing these people pointing a hose at leafs and cigarette butts until they slowly maniuplate them to the curb.&nbsp; Pick up a broom you lazy SOBs - it&#39;s faster, more effective, and saves tons of water. </p><p>I also think toilet-sink combos are more effective than half-flush toilets.&nbsp; Or better yet, why not combine both into one?</p>
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Steven / July 14, 2007 at 05:36 am
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It seems the fact that you sometimes have to flush a low-flow toilet more than once to get everything down (thus using the same amount of water as a normal toilet) was not factored in to this decision.
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dingo / July 16, 2007 at 03:04 pm
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<p><br />HALF FLUSH TOILETS&nbsp; are the shit. but I dont get why we flush pottable water with our shit anyway. shouldnt we be using grey water or rain water?&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>oh toronto, you suck.&nbsp;</p>
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Gloria / July 17, 2007 at 09:08 am
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I really like how the argument &quot;sometimes you have to flush twice!&quot; means we shouldn&#39;t try&nbsp;and save any water at all. I mean, why recycle, limit production of new goods, or compost? <em>Some </em>garbage ends up in the landfill anyway, so we might as well go all out.<br /><br />Tom: I&#39;m with you. I&#39;ve seen workers in front of the Bay hose down the sidewalk when it was still wet from an overnight rainfall. How much harder is it to pick up a broom? Isn&#39;t it cheaper for businesses to have workers sweep up rubbish, instead of paying exorbitant water bills?
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