Save Money, Make Your Restrooms Less Infectious, and Conserve Water

Last week I wrote about the ecological stupidity of manufacturing toilet paper from forests. 

Well, if that chat about toilet paper wasn't enough for you, today I'm writing to you about urinals.

Why on Earth should we be flushing drinking water down urinals? There is a healthier, cheaper and ecologically preferable way to go: waterless urinals.

Water scarcity will undoubtedly rival sea level rise as one of the consequences of global climate change. In fact, it might prove to be a far more serious risk.

In the U.S. the driest states have become some of our fastest growing, including Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and southern California. The flow of the Colorado River is at its lowest levels since measurements began at Lee's Ferry, Arizona 85 years ago. Thirty million people in seven states and parts of Mexico depend on the Colorado River for water. Lake Mead, which supplies virtually all the water used by Las Vegas, is half empty and according to statistical models, it will never be full again. Freshwater shortages are already a global concern in Africa, India and China and in the southwest USA they are inevitable.

The battles of yesterday were fought over land, today they are fought over oil, and soon they will be fought over water as well.

As the world population continues to increase, more people will require more water for the cultivation of food, fiber and industrial crops and for livestock and fish. Not to mention recreation and other industrial uses. Each of the billions of tiny micro-chips in our computers takes anywhere from three to eight gallons of water to make.  It takes 26 liters of water to make a one liter water bottle. About 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of water scarcity, and 500 million more people are approaching that situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage, lacking the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers. Lack of safe drinking water and sanitation is the single largest cause of illness in the world, contributing to the death of 5 million people a year and about 5,000 children every day.  By 2025 one-third of the planet, about 2 billion people, will live in areas experiencing absolute water scarcity, and another 2 billion will be experiencing water stress.

We have a very short period of time to get people educated on what this means.  According to the UK Meteorological Office, with no mitigation of climate change the severe droughts that now occur only once every 50 years will occur every other year by 2100.  In southern Spain, farmers and developers are so desperate for water that they are buying and selling water on the black market, mostly water obtained from illegal wells. Southern Spain has become a dessert, similar hydrologically to the desserts of northern Africa just to the south.

So why are government and commercial buildings, theaters, stadiums and arenas throughout the world flushing scarce drinking water down urinals when healthier, cost competitive alternatives exist in the form of waterless urinals?

Waterless urinals are healthier: According to research performed by the University of Arizona, "Flush type urinals are far more likely to be colonized by bacteria because of the greater presence of moisture [serving] as reservoirs of disease causing microorganisms, and to cause the widespread dissemination of microorganisms in a restroom because of the generation of aerosols during flushing."

Waterless urinals conserve water and saves money: Prior to switching to waterless urinals, each of the 176 urinals at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles was consuming 44,000 gallons of water each year. The Center pays about $2.95 per hundred cubic feet (HCF) of water it uses (1 HCF = 748 gallons). According to Bill Pottorff, Vice President for Engineering at STAPLES, "We have estimated that we are saving approximately $2,350 per month at STAPLES Center in direct water costs, not factoring sewer charges and any other municipal taxes. Each urinal saves roughly 4.5 HCF per month.  We save just over 7,000,000 gallons per year."

What is also great about the ecologically intelligent shift made by the STAPLES Center is that the entire urinal replacement program was paid for by grants supplied by the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, as part of its water conservation program.

So here is NRDC's challenge to all stadium and building managers, theater and arena operators in the world: We challenge you to save money. We challenge you to make your restrooms less infectious. We challenge you to conserve water. We challenge you to replace your water wasting urinals with waterless urinals.

 

 

 

Comments