jueves, 6 de agosto de 2009
Conservation By Urination
According to the Brazilian environmental organization SOS Mata Atlantica, a household that flushes its toilet one less time per day saves more than 1,100 gallons of water per year. So the organization has launched a TV ad campaign encouraging Brazilians to avoid a flush by peeing in the shower. The ad shows cartoons of everyone -- from aliens to King Kong -- urinating in the shower and ends with the slogan:
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Given how heavy the Brazilian diet is on meat, just having people eat 5 lb less meat per year will do much better in terms of water conservation than urinating in the shower. Each pound of meat requires anywhere from 450-5000 gallons of water, so this idea, while good on the surface, is negligible in terms of water savings compared to lessening meat production.
ResponderEliminarthat is the best commercial i have ever seen.
ResponderEliminarWouldn't you want to turn the shower on to wash it away?
ResponderEliminarThat would not be as helpful in most, if not all, of the US. Most modern building codes restrict the use of 3 gallon toilets for a more efficient 1.5 or even 1 gal. tank.
ResponderEliminarI got the 3 gallon figure by dividing 1100 gallons/year by 365 (days) to get the 1 flush amount. (FYI)
@Jimmy: heavy on meat? Rich Brasilian people maybe, but the 60% poor Brasilians only eat meat once a week. Rice, beans, corn flour and manioca flour are the staples of our diet.
ResponderEliminar"We don't shower in your toilet, so please don't pee in our shower."
ResponderEliminarPeople need to be told to pee in the shower?
ResponderEliminarHave to agree with Jimmy ... most of the Amazon deforestation is due to the ill-advised clearcutting for grazing, is it not?
ResponderEliminarRemind me to never, ever take a shower in Brazil.
Been doing this for years, in addition to hewing to the old Sonoran Desert maxim: "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."
ResponderEliminarJimmy is right, of course. But the pee-in-the-shower approach may help introduce his big-picture idea.
Gary O'Brien
Charlotte, NC
@Janet: our average temperature is 90
ResponderEliminar@Janet: (2) ah, and the meat from the grazing you mentioned is consumed almost completely by European and middle eastern countries and the US.
ResponderEliminarActually, since urine is sterile, there's no reason not to pee several times in the toilet before flushing (in addition to peeing in the shower, if one needs to pee before showering but obviously peeing in the shower while one is not showering is a bad idea).
ResponderEliminarPeople are gonna 'take time' peeing in the shower - and how much water will they use - extra - while peeing? About the same as a toilet flush?
ResponderEliminarHate to break it to you Janet, but this happens in the US too. Often.
ResponderEliminarMy question is, does this add any time to the average shower length? If so, how much extra water does the extra shower time waste?
Also, as if baths weren't wasteful enough, this widens the water use gap even further between showers and baths!
A final thought. In Europe, I've noticed a propensity to use the hand-held spray showers rather than the wall mounted ones found in the US. Is there any net water use difference between the two, on average? I find it takes much longer to shower using the hand-held ones, though that may just be because I'm not used to them.
Water scarcity is a local issue. Not eating meat that was raised using water in another area doesn't save your city any water. Unless you happen to a rancher, the water is coming from different sources, and the water source used for livestock may not even be overtaxed.
ResponderEliminarI follow this advice already...been doing it for years. It would be naive to think a majority of males haven't ever urinated in the shower. The commercial just brings to light the brilliance of the idea. It's taking multi-tasking to the next level.
ResponderEliminarAs for the Brazilian diet, when the President Lula's goal is to guarantee at least one meal a day (even if it's just rice and beans) for his countrymen, I don't think the major concern is meat consumption.
"People need to be told to pee in the shower?"
ResponderEliminarI'm with Zach on this one.
What about those of us that take baths instead of showers, would the recommendation still apply?
ResponderEliminarIs this so shocking? I mean, come on: 50% of men admit to peeing in the shower, and the other 50% of men are lying.
ResponderEliminarWhile a noble goal the fact is that in the US even if we eliminated all toilet flushes we would only reduce our nations water usage by 2%. Agriculture and Industry use about 92% of the water in the US. I don't advocate eliminating either entirely but efforts at making those two effecient would help more.
ResponderEliminar@M.B.: eew. Baths are already somewhat unsanitary (stew in your own filth, eh?) and urinating in the bath won't score those already scarce good smell points. Anyway, anytime I bathe I also usually shower afterwards to finish cleaning up.
ResponderEliminarWhy not re-route the used shower water to a holding tank that can be used to flush the toilet all day?
ResponderEliminarInstituting low-flush toilets would save the same.
ResponderEliminarWhy do Brazilian's take showers? Because peeing in the bath is gross. Hahahaha
ResponderEliminar"Why not re-route the used shower water to a holding tank that can be used to flush the toilet all day?
ResponderEliminarIt's all pipes.
ResponderEliminarTurn on water, rinse, turn off water, soap up, pee, turn on water, rinse.
ResponderEliminarI guess I AM and environmentalist!!
ResponderEliminarIf Brazil is anything like Mexico, I would bet that the majority of toilets don't flush...you just take a bucket of water and pour it in until the waste is evacuated.
ResponderEliminarGeorge Costanza would approve.
ResponderEliminarI recently read an article on "virtual" water and as other comments here have pointed out, conserving direct use water in Brazil is only a local benefit. Water saved in Brazil doens't travel to the dry regions of Brazil to irrigate crops there. In fact water saved in a wet region does nothing to alleviate drought in a dry region. BUT, the water used to irrigate coffee plants in a dry region, followed by exporting the coffee beans to a wetter region DOES waste water. If Brazilians really wanted to conserve water, they should shut down their coffee plantations in the dry regions.
ResponderEliminarInteresting concept!
ResponderEliminarBRILLIANT!
ResponderEliminarPeople pee in their showers???? And they talk about it in the New York Times? Ewwwwww!!! I know dogs more civilized than that. I'll never be able to take a shower in someone else's home again!
ResponderEliminarOver the last 3 years of living in London, I figure to have save 10's of thousands of gallons by not flushing after each urination.I encouraged any visitors with a printed sign:
ResponderEliminarif it's yellow, that's mellow
If it's brown flush it down.
(I'm not claiming authorship)
It was only a reasonable success, with even regular visitors flushing automatically, even if they had noticed the sign.
Worth a try for you?
To all who are grossed out by recycled water: don't volunteer to fly on the space shuttle or the intl. space station. All water containing fluids are reprocessed, recycled and re-consumed. This could include sweat, urine and even nastier stuff if it can be filtered. The reverse osmosis filters that NASA uses are top notch, I can imagine that they use the same ones that the Pentagon sources for military use in the field. I somehow doubt that the Russian made filters of the MIR era were at the same standard though, those Russian cosmonauts were probably drinking you-know-what.
ResponderEliminarSince 90 percent of water use is in agriculture, conservation efforts such as this are pretty futile. Put differently, conserving ten percent of agriculture water use would satisfy all present needs for industrial and residential use. That ten percent savings would be relatively easy to achieve. See a series of articles in July, 2008 Scientific American if you are interested in this.
ResponderEliminarWe don't flush our toilet at all -- we clog the shower drain when we shower, and then use that water to flush the toilet instead.
ResponderEliminarThen there's no stinky yellow mellowing on days when someone in the house is particularly dehydrated, and we save water.
Enter in the site xixinobanho.org (pee in the shower)
ResponderEliminaror in the site sosma.org.br the organization (SOS Mata Atl
The thing is, to make some advance in conservation without significantly altering lifestyle.
ResponderEliminarWash it away with just a liter is just a big step down from 12 liters. 1 meter down the tube the streams meet anyway.
This is not the place to claim for revolutions but to start thr feel "I CAN do something by myself! Yes, You CAN!"
Maybe this approach will start more and successfuller revolutions than the pc approach emanated in postings hitherto....
Lucky thinking II ;-)
For some people it cures athlete's foot.
ResponderEliminar" Since 90 percent of water use is in agriculture, conservation efforts such as this are pretty futile. Put differently, conserving ten percent of agriculture water use would satisfy all present needs for industrial and residential use. That ten percent savings would be relatively easy to achieve. See a series of articles in July, 2008 Scientific American if you are interested in this."
ResponderEliminarI think it is really annoying if someone says why do anything if something else has a bigger affect, especially something simple as this. Start small! I come from the Netherlands, and since it is a small country, the efforts for saving the environment are not big scaled either, but I am very happy we are trying, although it would be very useful if bigger countries like the US, Russia, China etc. would put more effort in saving the environment. You have to start somewhere, and hope that others pick up the good ideas.
SKV: "Instituting low-flush toilets would save the same."
ResponderEliminarIn my experience, low-flush toilets lead people to flush more than once, and continuous-flush toilets lead people to flush just the right amount to make the excrements go away.
My kids are leading the way on this effort. Neither boy flushes, they love to pee outside, in the bathtub, the shower or anyplace but the toilet. Think how much water we would save if I didn't force them to bathe.
ResponderEliminarAll this time I just thought they were silly little boys. I didn't realize they were ardent environmentalists ;-)
PS The yellow when mellow is still stinky!
A better way to conserve water is a product we use that continuously extracts shower as you are showering and pumps it through the wall onto landscape plants. It's simple and convenient to operate and saves us money on our water bill each month. The kids love the remote that turns the pump on and off. The plants and trees are thriving in our desert climate. If you are interested in viewing this product, the company's website is MiragePacific.com
ResponderEliminarWhy waste the nutrients? Go outside and pee next to a fruit tree.
ResponderEliminar