Although installing a dual-flush toilet may not seem like a very Simple Saturday change, it is for me — because it was already installed! To my surprise, when I moved into the new place and used the bathroom, I noticed the handle had a little symbol on it with instructions to push forward for a wee flush and backwards for a full flush.
Woohoo! Of course, I’ll probably still keep to pledge #166 and throw a filled water bottle in there just to be extra-green, but I love that I can finally make a substantial change without actually doing anything (other than, you know, buying a house).
P.S. For those who haven’t yet heard about my successful green move, Lloyd Alter was kind enough to write about it over here on Treehugger (he says it was only partially successful because a truck was used for some of it and he ended up driving to my place on top of that, but still — I’d say we did a good job, and at least showed a few onlookers that it was possible to cram pillows, a VCR player and half a kitchen onto a cargo bike).
Image from these dudes
Cool toilet!
That’s a really good idea. However, I’m wondering if you should put a brick in there. Normally, I’d say go for it, but since you need more water to properly flush the…uh….solid waste, you may end up flushing it more than once to get rid of everything (eeew). My apartment has a super low flow toilet and sometimes you have to flush it twice just for toilet paper. I feel like it’s a big waste of water to constantly flush twice all the time.
Dual flush toilets normally only use 6l for solid and 3l for liquid; I don’t know that putting a 2l bottle in there would be a good idea – you might end up with no water at all! Maybe there’s even something that prevents you from doing that…
Even better than wee-flushing for, um, wee flushing, is to follow the good old yellow-mellow rule of thumb. Something like 25% of household water use is from toilet-flushing!
have you thought about installing a compost toilet? my household uses one, and it’s fantastic. zero water waste, zero odor, and it can’t break or back up or cause problems the way plumbing does. we installed it in october and are all really happy about it.
That is so awesome! I’m jealous.
That is a good green change (even if you didn’t need to do it yourself). Here in NZ all new toilets are required to be dual flush.
We need more people like you.