Water Conservation: Low Flow Toilets

I am still basking in the glow of our astounding water challenge success. I am also humbled by the awareness that some of my neighbors and friends have been conserving their water better than we have for a long time. The big conclusion for me is that it is possible to use substantially less water through unremarkable changes: washing clothes less (and only washing full loads), showering a little less and taking navy showers, and not flushing the toilet every time.

There is more to this story, however. On November 7^th of last year (2014), my favorite neighborhood plumbers Heise’s Plumbing  came by and installed 2 low-flow shower heads and 2 low-flow toilets. Thanks to the SFPUC website, I can see how our water usage changed with these new fixtures.  

Check out the reduction in our household water usage from November to December last year! Our December bill spanned November 15 – December 12. During that period, we used an average of 80 gallons of water per day compared to 174 gallons the previous month. That is about a 55% decrease in water usage from one month to the next.

You can see from the chart above, that the real impact is not that extreme, but in the 3 months prior to the toilet installation, we used in the ballpark of 150 gallons of water per day for our family of 4. Previously I noted that our family was using approximately 33 gallons of water per day per person up until the Water Challenge began in March, which took into account lower water usage since the HE toilets installation.

I just looked at our averages through last November when the low flow toilets and showerheads went in. I discovered that, from November 2013 through November 2014, our average water use was a little higher – 37 gallons per person or 158 gallons for our household each day.

Since November when the new toilets and shower heads were installed, we used closer to 100 gallons of water per day. We reduced our household water use by 30% with absolutely no behavior change other than having new toilets and showerheads installed. We reduced our water consumption from approximately 35 gallons per person per day to 25 gallons per person per day, or a ~7% reduction in water usage per person x 4. Toilets matter!

The Dirty about the Toilets:

I installed the Toto Eco Drake – model #ST743E tank andmodel #C744E bowl. I purchased these on the recommendation of Heise’s because they said, “They work well.” I agree. They get the flushing done. This toilet gets good reviews by other users too.

The toilets are single flush as opposed to the dual pee/poo settings that flush as little as .9 gallons of water. My toilets have the WaterSense sticker on them, indicating that they don’t use more than 1.28 gallons per flush, which is the standard to be considered a High-Efficiency (HE)toilet. (Mine use 1.28 gallons per flush.)

From what I understand, a standard toilet uses 3.5 – 7 gallons of water per flush. Who knew? I think some of my neighbors did, but I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, and no one I know has been talking about gallons per flush. Let’s talk toilet! I am sorry I didn’t replace my toilets sooner. I believe the low-flow shower heads are using less water too, although I would guess the bulk of our new water conservation is due to the HE toilets.

Start-up Costs:

I paid $370 per toilet. In looking around a little online today, I see I could have bought the toilets myself for around $250 and then just paid Heise’s to install them for me. I could even have installed the toilets myself, which I believe is fairly easy to do. But, I am lazy, and I love finished projects. With labor included, the total cost of this project was $1,250. The City of San Francisco gave me a $125 rebate for each toilet ($300 total rebate) to bring that back down to $950.

In looking through my new, favorite website some more – the San Francisco Public Utilities website – I just discovered it is even possible for some San Francisco residents to have a new HE toilet installed at no cost. You can find rebate information on this site too.

As I was looking around to find the best new toilets, I came across the Maximum Performance MaP website that tests toilets. It is a good resource for selecting a new HE toilet.

 More Questions:

For anyone else out there obsessing over their toilets: How has the installation of a dual-flush HE toilet impacted your water use? Are you seeing even more extreme reductions in water use than I am?

Ted Cruz, Neil deGrasse Tyson and a Country of Armchair Scientists: Do We Care Whether Environmental Policy is Scientific or Not?

This morning, a Facebook friend of mine liked the March 24 Washington Post article entitled, "Ted Cruz says satellite data show the globe isn't warming. This satellite scientist feels otherwise". 

 The author, Chris Mooney, is a journalist who is most well-known for his book The Republican War on Science (2005). In the newspaper article, Mooney describes several possible sources of climate data, satellite data being one source. He also describes how different people can have different perspectives on global warming based on looking at data from one year vs. trends over years and decades. Mooney ultimately criticizes Cruz for cherry picking data points and misinterpreting the Physicist Carl Mears' conclusions from his satellite data. Mears, whose data Cruz has used to argue that humans are not causing global warming, has said this conclusion is incorrect.

 A couple weeks ago, I had the thrill of attending Neil deGrasse Tyson's entertaining talk in San Francisco. Somehow, I managed to be the last person to ask him a question during Q and A. (OK, I climbed over a few people to exit my row and threw some punches.) My question: I just watched the Cosmos episode on global warming. How would you recommend applying what scientists are telling us in our day-to-day lives? In other words, can I make a significant impact with my own lifestyle changes? What kind of response should people like me - people who are not astrophysicists or climate scientists working on producing more data - do in response to what we know now?

Do you know what Neil - yes, we are now close friends - replied? He said, "Stay visible." He actually said that twice. Now, he was referring to how he would like me to continue standing while he answered another question, but Neil did admonish me to "Stay visible." These words have given me newfound direction in life.

Ultimately, Neil did not respond to specifics about personal behavior change. Instead, he focused on how important it is for the U.S.'s environmental policies to agree with emergent science. Our national policies should reflect a commitment to utilizing climate science to guide our actions in taking care of our planet.

"Emergent science" is not a single, recent data point. It is the general consensus of the scientific community today, based on multiple data sources, test re-test reliability, peer reviews and criticism. Understanding and using emergent science requires practicing science in our day-to-day lives. It means becoming scientists ourselves in how we interpret information and make decisions.

 With the tv and radio shows Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and Star Talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson is urging us all to be better scientists. He is making science fun and accessible so that science will become more tightly woven into our cultural fabric. This was the theme of NDT's talk a couple weeks ago. He showed how scientific inquiry has changed over time and in different cultures of the world, producing more and less innovation. 

 Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to make us all better scientists so that we can analyze arguments better to distinguish between facts, spin, and conflicts of interest. More importantly, as better scientists, we will be more prone to promote politicians who will utilize emergent science to create effective policies and innovate on issues like global warming. This is where our impact could be significant.

Personally, I would like to believe that global warming isn't happening. I would like to continue doing whatever I want at all times. Because I want to. And I can. It makes my life more comfortable and free than probably most humans ever in the history of humans. But I see the polluted air hanging over my house, and I can't remember the last time it really rained, and I know I should pay attention to the scientists.

I am left with the questions: Do we value science enough to urge our politicians to use it? Are we willing to become better scientists as more and more information is available to us? Could Fritz Heider's idea of the "naive scientist" from the 1950s be more true today than it used to be? Or, are Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor still correct in defining us as "cognitive misers", creatures who won't think any more than they have to? To the degree that we are cognitive misers, will personal and community beliefs trump scientific inquiry in who we elect to create national policy?

Water Challenge: Results from Month 1

Well, the results are in! Our average water usage per person per day last month was 17 gallons. In one month, we were able to reduce our water consumption by 52%, and we moved a lot closer to the world average water consumption target of 13 gallons per day!

To sum up the results, our average water use per person in January-February was 33 gallons per day, compared to last month's (Feb. - Mar.) average of 17 gallons. I am honestly startled and encouraged by these results. I guess I haven't been paying as much attention to how we have used our water as I would like to think considering all the messages out there about California's severe drought. 

This is a family photo near a lake in the Sierra foothills, taken late February 2015. Note the buoy on the sand behind us that used to part of the swimming hole there.


The thing is, there is still plenty of room for improvement. For example:
*  We still watered our little yard last month. We could turn off the water entirely and only maintain plants that can survive without irrigation. This might mean killing off my 3 fruit trees and giving up on my berries and a few other vegetables we plant on occasion. It would also mean brown grass or the need to replace the grass with something else. Perhaps I will go back to backyard chicken farming and allow the entire space to become bare earth! We have maintained our little green patch for our kids to have space to run around in the backyard, but I don't think we would give up much to give up on green grass. I would be sad to see my plum, apple and lemon trees go, but perhaps they should.

Can we give this up? Probably . . .

*  We could simply continue to get better at flushing less often and also washing dishes and clothes less often. That is easy.

*  I haven't switched to using biodegradable soaps yet, but I could get more extreme and change all the products we use so that our gray water can get reused in other ways without concern about polluting the environment.

*  It would take more work, but we could save even more if it was possible to re-plumb our house so that kitchen sink and shower water could get re-used for irrigation and flushing toilets. (I also love the idea of an "endless shower" - a shower that continues to cycle the same water for x number of times, eliminating the guilt of a luxurious shower now and then. In talking with our contractor, I know the city of San Francisco does not officially allow this, but it would be fairly straightforward to include a switch system with a shower installation that allows for the homeowner to determine when fresh vs. recycled water gets introduced.)

*  We could utilize our rain barrel better to make rainwater our sole source of irrigation (when, in theory, it rains again). I know this is complicated when watering edible plants, but possible with some planning.

In the coming months, I will continue with the water challenge by obtaining a water conservation analysis from the SFPUC and also by attempting to keep a daily water usage diary. Send me your water challenge results and tips!

Water Challenge: Water Usage Update - March 9

We are now 24 days into our water challenge, and I am pleased to report that our average per person per day water use is down to 17 gallons. I haven’t started my daily diary – I am planning to start doing this during my next bill period beginning March 12 – but I have noticed a couple trends.

1.     We generally use less than 100 gallons per day for our household except on days when we do laundry. Those are the days that we have had our highest use days of just over 100 gallons.

2.     The other days I have noticed spikes are on days when we have been gone and our babysitter/cat sitter has stayed over. I believe this reflects water usage taking typical showers instead of navy showers.

My husband and I continue to feel our new water usage practices are sustainable, although we would still like the comfort of a shower that is warm. For this reason, we may invest in a tankless water heater. My husband remarked this morning that he felt weird yesterday when he took a regular shower because he has adjusted to the navy shower. I think this is true for me too. It is difficult to let the water run now that we are thinking about it more consciously. Thanks so much for ruining a perfectly good long, luxurious and hot shower! Ha ha. We actually don’t feel like we are missing much, and we feel good about paying more attention to wasting water.

Our kids are getting better about not flushing the mellow yellow too. I like that we are increasing their consciousness a bit, although we are not forcing them to take cold showers! Our kids typically take baths instead of showers, and so I save a little water by plugging the drain as the water starts flowing into the tub. Even though it is initially cold, I keep it turned to the hottest setting and let it fill until the too-hot water balances with the initial cold to result in a bath that is the right temperature. They take baths 1-2 times per week. Our friends from Barcelona reported that this is their typical bathing schedule.

More on Social Facilitation

This month as we have consciously thought about our water usage, I have noticed more discussion about ways to save water. It is not just the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission that is pushing for cultural change in our water use. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook about a 90-something-year-old neighbor of hers who re-uses bathwater on her garden. There was some discussion about how soaps in the bathwater can hurt the garden. I haven’t tried this yet, but I am considering looking into biodegradable soaps for daily use – for bathing and also washing dishes and doing laundry. I believe it should be possible to reuse this gray water as long as we are careful about our soaps. I will be looking into this further. It is great to discover some members of my community discussing mundane details like this in the public sphere.

A week ago or so, my husband and I went out with our friends Bruce and Andrew, and of course, we started talking about what we are doing to try to cut out daily water use. I was pleasantly startled by how our friend responded when we told him about our new way of taking navy showers and not flushing the mellow yellow. He said, “Oh, we have been doing that for years. Isn’t everyone? We are in a drought!” They also enlightened me on flushing toilet paper. A household of boys may be able to go longer without flushing since they aren't using TP. Girls, we need to use less paper to decrease flushing. Is it possible to use 1 little square each time?

 Here I have been feeling so enlightened and great about our new water practices, and our old friend has been quietly doing this for MANY YEARS and assuming we have been too!? Similarly, my sister-in-law who grew up in Korea commented to me that it is simple to use less water, and she felt that water conservation is a cultural difference. She grew up saving water in more ways than people who grew up in the U.S. As a personal anecdote, one of my aunts once remarked that she would sometimes just let the water run out of her kitchen faucet while cooking because she liked the sound of running water! That was the 80s! I too am guilty of long, luxurious showers and bathing excessively, especially when I was a teen ager.

 I am more convinced after a few conversations with people in my community this month that we can use our water more efficiently by simply talking about our bathroom practices. When was the last time you engaged in potty talk with a friend? I think the time is right to go against what your parents always told you as a kid, "Stop the potty talk!" Actually, more potty talk, please!

Water Challenge: Utilities Bill Information

I have to admit, I haven't looked at our utilities bill for a long time. We pay our bill each month with an automated service, and my husband is the one who typically checks on our household bills. I quickly discovered that there is a lot of useful information here that allows me to drill down to our daily household water usage, how our water usage compares to the average San Franciscan, and numerous tips on how to use less water. I was really impressed with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission website.
Using their data, I determined that our average water usage from May 1 2014 - February 12 2015 has been less than the average 4-person household in San Francisco, which is 49 gallons per person per day. During that period we used 33 gallons per person per day. Go, us!

 However, being under this average, which is well below the average American's use, is still substantially higher than it could be. We are clearly above the world average water usage of 13 gallons per person per day.

What is really utilitarian about my utility bill is that since my water usage data are provided on a day-to-day basis, it is possible to determine the days my family used the most and least water, and we can track that usage to our behaviors on that day. For example, on February 4, we used 201 gallons. On that day, we were preparing to take off for the weekend, so I did a bunch of laundry, and we may have taken several showers too. This reminds me that we could probably do a better job of wearing our clothes multiple times before washing them. I know I am guilty of throwing things in the dirty clothes hamper too often.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an informative website that provides data on overall water use in the USA, although their graph dates back to 1999.

My utilities bill brings up a couple additional thoughts. These data could be a tool of "social facilitation", a tendency for behavior to improve when in the presence of other people. Should we be talking about our water bills more and commenting on what we have done in the privacy of our own homes to decrease water usage? Perhaps if we generally had a better sense of how our neighbors use water, this knowledge could spur more efficient water usage through creating new norms.

I believe this is what the SFPUC is trying to do with their website data, conservation tips, incentives to replace shower heads and toilets, etc., but this has certainly been off my radar, and water usage has not been a hot topic in my community! I haven't started keeping a day-to-day diary of how we use water (e.g. # of loads of laundry, showers, baths, watering the garden), but this could assist in tracking daily water usage to particular behaviors. I will attempt to implement this for the remainder of our water challenge month to generate more ideas on how to use less water. Additionally, SFPUC offers free home evaluations. I will have that done in the near future and report on any additional ways to conserve water.

As for an update on the water challenge so far, we have used an average of 18 gallons of water per person per day since February 12! This is a reduction in our daily usage by about 45%. Interestingly the significant change in our household water use corresponds to the graph above showing that flushing the toilet and taking showers accounts for about 43% of domestic water use.

My husband and I think we can sustain our new practices, which is key, I think to permanently changing our ways. The changes we have made are small ones and don't impact us in any real way. Here is what we have succeeded in doing differently so far this month:

1. We are taking navy showers and not waiting for the water to heat up before showering. We may buy a tankless water heater to make our showers a bit more luxurious in the long term - warm instead of partially cold - but we have both found we don't feel like we are missing much to take substantially shorter showers. I am starting to think about a long soak as a treat and something to look forward to. Here is where the magic happens:

2. We have been flushing the toilet about every 3 pees. As long as we keep the lid closed, this has been no problem and not stinky. We haven't found our cat drinking the yellow water. Sometimes our kids forget about the water challenge and flush more often, but flushing has decreased.

 3. I have been collecting some of my used kitchen sink water - water I used to wash my hands or rinse a dish - and throwing it on my potted plants outside my kitchen window instead of collecting fresh water. So far so good.

4. I have only been running full loads of dishes and laundry, and we are doing a better job of wearing clothes 2-3 times before washing. I am trying to teach my kids to examine their clothes before tossing them in the hamper.

Finally, I would also like to know what is an equitable and sustainable quantity of water to use each day. This is complicated, but if anyone out there has a reasoned estimate, please let me know how many gallons of water each person on Earth could expect to have for daily use if, theoretically our planet's available fresh water was parsed equally and sustainably among 7.3 billion people. That is the goal I seek.

The Water Challenge: Be (More) Like Mozambique

 Mozambique appears to be the country using the least water per capita (as of 2006). In contrast to an average Mozambiquian’s use of 4 liters (~1 gallon) of water per day, the average American uses 575 liters (~152 gal) per day. Worldwide, an average Earth inhabitant uses/needs ~50 liters (~13 gallons) of water each day.

Quality of life is poor when a person has access to a mere 4 liters (1 gallon) of water each day. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recommend a minimum of 20 liters (~5gal.) of water for sufficient drinking water and personal hygiene and closer to 50 liters (~13 gallons) of water when factoring in bathing and laundry. (See p. 34 in the United Nations Development Programme report.) It turns out, people use a lot less water when they have to haul it around to use it.

 What would the average American need to give up to cut water use by about 90%? Perhaps we should imagine the effort it would take to transport our daily water on our backs every time we turn on the faucet.

My family will face “The Water Challenge” this month. Our family of 5 – 2 adults, 2 kids and 1 cat – will do everything we can to cut our water use. We will keep track of how we do by comparing our water bills ending in mid-February (typical usage month) to mid-March (challenge month). 

As we do the Water Challenge, we will record all the things we changed to try to reduce our water consumption. We will also comment as we go along on on how our new habits feel and whether we think we could maintain our new lifestyle. Our initial strategies include the following: 

*  "If it's yellow, it's mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." In the last couple days, we have peed ~ 3 times before flushing and kept the lid down so our cat won't drink the pretty yellow water. Reported new odors: no change when the lid is closed!

*  We are also trying out the "navy shower", which basically means, only let the water run to get wet and to rinse off. While soaping, shampooing, shaving, the water is turned off.

*  My husband and I have tried to not let the shower and sink water run until it warms up. This means, we have to be sweet to each other and take turns being the one receiving the cold shower. This also means that we are attempting to take our showers in a row to optimize the warm water. (After taking a cold shower, one starts to ponder the pros and cons of a tankless water heater too.)

*  Our kids are really excited about bathing less. We are all planning to shower about 2x per week - a little more than the traditional Saturday night soak.

We challenge you to join The Water Challenge! Let us know how you did, and give us more hints on how to use less water! I will add them as they come in. Our goal is to decrease our water use by at least 25% this month.

In the days to come, I will post "the data" about our household water use the last few months - pre- and post- low flow shower heads and toilets. I will be comparing our usage to the average San Franciscan too.

A Jumble of Normal, Everyday Panic

I see a haze of pollution floating over San Francisco today. It is January 2015, and the 8^th Spare the Air day in a row with no rain on the horizon. And yet we all jump in our cars and go about doing things and consuming like any other day. We have obligations, after all. I am often driving kids to and from school and classes. My husband drives 30 minutes down the Peninsula to his job. We go out to dinner, go to the movies, visit friends. We drive to the airport to go on vacation. We buy gifts. We board a cruise ship for a week over Christmas break. Today, I sit in standstill traffic smelling exhaust, trying to make it over to Oakland in time to see a movie at the Piedmont Theatre with a friend. It is 15 miles away, and I abort my plan after I realize I won’t make it in time; it would take an hour to get there. My kids and husband drive up to Tahoe to ski for the weekend, but there is no snow. I order new clothes and food from Amazon that will be delivered very quickly to my home in a pristine cardboard box. I have Mission Chinese food delivered, or Spicy Bite, or whatever I want.

Am I doing enough to be sitting in my plug-in Prius and eating a largely organic and vegetarian diet? Is it enough that I only drink California wine and tap water made sparkling with my Soda Stream? Am I doing my part in composting and recycling and even taking my plastic bags to Safeway for recycling? Is it enough that I correctly dispose of old batteries, light bulbs, pharmaeuticals, paint, chemicals, and electronics? Is it sufficient to reuse items instead of putting them in the trash and typically bringing my own bags to the store?

What should I really be doing to save our ocean, our air, our planet? Should I stop drinking coffee and eating bananas because neither can be locally produced? Isn’t it great that I just had 2 low-flow toilets and shower heads installed? Does this really help, or is it just a miniscule drop in a very large bucket? Is it better for the earth that our cars are hybrids, or should we have not purchased new cars in favor of using the old ones as long as possible like that lady who had nearly 600k miles on her car? 

Should we sell our cars – yes, our family has 2 – in favor of only using public transit and bicycles? Should we switch schools and jobs so all of that would be practical? Should we all be living in the same place, our extended family making up a tribal group, the way people used to live? Should we never take another airplane flight or drive to see my family in Idaho and Washington? Should I not remodel my house? Is it wrong to want to travel the world? Should entire cities move and become more densely populated to use resources more efficiently? Should we never buy another packaged product that produces waste? Should my lifestyle look more like someone who lives in Mozambique, using only 1 gallon of water per day compared to the world average of 13? (The average American uses 80 – 100 gallons of water per day at home.)  

Is the problem already so big that only drastic action will save us? Or is it true that every small action makes a difference?

What about the polar bears and the massive extinction that our oceans are facing as of last week? I say “last week” because that is when I heard the news story. I know, though, that this has been a long time coming and also a crisis that has been brewing since the Industrial Revolution. What about the birds dying in some unknown goo in the San Francisco Bay right now that isn’t really getting cleaned up, because clean-up is generally paid for by the petroleum industry? What about the millions of pieces of plastic trash and discarded fishing nets that kill sea life?

What about that new fact that the coral reefs around Cuba seem to be doing much better than reefs adjacent to populations that have not been living in austerity across the last 50 years?

Should we all really be talking about population control as the real culprit of environmental degradation now that there are over 7 billion people in the world, compared to only 1 billion in 1800 and many fewer than that for the bulk of human history? The population of humans has skyrocketed in the last 200 years, corresponding with the Industrial Revolution. Should we be alarmed that, in 1970, there were only half the people there are now on our planet? Why is anyone who cares about the environment having more than 2 children if this is true? Perhaps lifestyle matters less than the sheer number of people trying to eat and live well? What will our earth be like for my 2 kids age 6 and 9?

Should there be some kind of social contract if technological health care will generally keep us all alive into our eighties? Should we think long and hard about how we are living and the resources we are using, if we want to share what we have with several billion more people?

Am I overly panicked? Would I lead a happier life if I just didn’t think about all this so much? It seems like the people around me who are proceeding with their lifestyles unquestioningly seem to be having the last laugh because they are not stressed out. Whatever I might do to “do my part” may not have any significant impact anyhow, so perhaps the best action I could take for my own mental health and that of my family’s would be to have fun and do what I want while it lasts? To stop being so serious and OCD about all this?

How can I take drastic action – and is that even necessary – if no one else stops using their cars or taking flights or consuming or adjusting their normative lifestyle in any significant way? How is change possible?

Deep breath with eyes closed. I am comforted by images of air far more polluted in Beijing, but my sense of despair persists. I know that this air is the consequence of my lifestyle, my country’s demand for so many things.

I want to do things differently, to know that my actions today made the earth a bit better – cleaner, more educated, more peaceful, more collaborative both with other humans and cultures, but also with other species on land, in the air, in the oceans and fresh water around me. I will feel more at ease if I know I am doing my part to tread lightly, and ideally, leave my world better than I found it.

But what should I do to keep our earth clean and healthy? I saw Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, and I know he was criticized for publicizing that movie from the comfort of private jets and 2 exceedingly large residences. I try to pay attention to how I can live greener and educate my kids to be good stewards of the earth. I have a friend who is a green builder, and I live in a place where a lot of people are trying to do their best to minimize their environmental impact. However, I don’t know how to practically do this on a day-to-day basis or if we are doing enough, and I have the sinking feeling that most people around me don’t either.

I would like to have my marching orders, a play book, step-by-step instructions, a “how to” guide, whatever you want to call it, based on the best information we have, to take sufficient action today to ensure a healthy planet for the future.