- if it's just a pee
This is the advice given in the DIY Planet Repairs Toolkit (review of this little "kit" to follow soon) from the Office of the Mayor of London.
While the idea of not flushing the lavatory each and every time, even if it was just a “pee”, may offend some people and even be considered unhygienic and even unclean by some, it would save lots of water if we all would follow this advice. Each and every time the loo is flushed “unnecessarily”, gallons of perfectly good water are just literally poured down the drain.
If we see that even in countries as rich – at least in some places that country is – as the USA there are places where water has become so scarce that the supply has to be trucked in by tanker and then is released from a water tower to the community only for a few hours each day then such advice as given in that booklet from the London Mayor's Office might be worth more than just a little consideration. Who know is we not all, one day, be faced with similar water shortages as are being reported from the USA, if we do not learn to conserve water.
While households are one source of water wastage often, as with all too frequent flushing of the lavatory and leaving the tap running while brushing teeth (Why would anyone do that? What's wrong with using a beaker?), industry is one of the major users and indeed wasters of water, though only second in line after the water companies themselves who do not fix leaks and broken pipes fast enough. Before they should even be permitted to tell their customers to conserve water, however important and necessary this may be and is, they must get their own act together first and sort out those pipes that seem to be more porous than a sieve and that are for ever leaking gallons and gallons of water into the surrounding soil and elsewhere.
© M V Smith, November 2007
Don't rush to flush -
