[Prologue: I'll be periodically posting about small, cheap changes that have a relatively large benefit for the environment - the low hanging fruit.]
Southern California is perpetually in drought. Growing up here, we would occasionally hear pleas from local officials to reduce water use in various ways. One common phrase people threw around was, "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down" - meaning, don't flush the toilet after urinating. Despite growing up in SoCal, I never heeded this appeal. I guess I thought there'd be some unseemly, unsanitary downside.
Well, now my damn yard is using a ton of water and I'm trying desperately to think of ways to use less water (working on the yard thing too, but that'll take longer). So, I've started to let it mellow. Basically, I flush only about 1/3 as much as I normally would have. After a few weeks, no drawbacks. Of course, I would only do this in my master bathroom, not the bathroom that guests would use.
It's probably saving about 6 gallons of water per day. It's not a huge amount, but it requires no work at all. In fact it requires doing less. So why not?
Why not just kill two birds with one stone?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.howtodothings.com/home-garden/how-to-use-urine-as-a-fertilizer
You should be able to get 5-6 "browns" in there before flushing to save even more water!
ReplyDeletethe other anonymous is right.... peeing in your yard is great!
ReplyDeletethen the rule simplifies to: If its brown flush it down.
As a physicist you have to appreciate the simplification of this terrestrial law.
Also urine is sterile, mostly water, according to wikipedia, "Urine is an aqueous solution of greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L and other dissolved ions, inorganic and organic compounds."
Also you can use it as a catalyst in producing certain kinds of compost and compost tea, similar to the link the other anonymous suggested.