by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Just when you think you have heard and seen it all along comes something like this...
The Drop-A-Brick founders are, obviously, not hawking your typical red-clay bricks. The Drop-A-Brick is a device that promises to save water by taking up room in your toilet tank. The old-school idea is that if you displace that extra half-gallon of water with a brick, you are not using said amount to flush your toilet. Drop-A-Bricks are supposedly made of a nontoxic rubber, cost $15, and arrive in the mail squished flat. They are filled with a hydro-gel that expands once you add a bit of water and makes the thing heavy enough to sink.
But $15 for a rubber brick? You gotta kidding! I bet I could find me a real brick (or 10) for free. And while it may be true what the project founders claim that regular bricks would eventually dissolve and cause all sorts of expensive problems for people's toilets I am sure one could replace them before they would get ever anywhere near dissolving.
Those “bricks” are claimed to be eco-friendly but I would rather suggest that they are NOT considering that they are made from plastic and thus, I would suggest, we go down a different route and the local authorities and other agencies are happy to give advice on this matter for free.
In Britain we have had the “Hippo” device (http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk/) for years already that, put into the cistern, is meant to reduce the amount of water flushed down and there are also flush systems available that give two different kinds of water flows for flushing waste from the toilet.
A plastic carrier bag, filled with some rocks, BTW, also would do the trick of water displacement and also comes for cheap and in addition to that you take one of those bags out of the landfill.
Time and again, it would appear, with everyone wishing to reduce their environmental footprint and such, that there is someone who finds a way of making a quick buck from those that wish to do so. Greenwash all over the place, it would appear, and we have to be very careful what we believe.
© 2014
