#1 Leaky Toilets are Everyone’s Business ! Keep the Drinkable Water!

A problem that no one wants to fix?

In this post:

#1 Leaky toilets

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) –  official wording: “Ensure available and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

Commercial and industrial buildings are full of runny and leaky toilets.  No body fixes them. 

When you think about the water problems in this world…
— 1/2 have lots of good drinkable water and wastes it down leaky toilets
— 1/2 does not have enough good drinkable water, busy trying to overcome the problem.

I started by wanting to tackle this big leaky toilet problem.  One link lead to another and there is so much to talk about and so much going on.  The discussion got longer.  Maybe it will spark interest & more action….

Honored working men and women:

• Buildings and Grounds keepers
• Dredge operators, Health and safety engineers
• Farmers and Ranchers, Compost Project Coordinators
• Pipe Fitters, Water and Liquid Waste Treatment System Operators
• Plumbers, Water Distribution Operators
• Soil conservationists
• Well diggers, Pump Station Operators

and also:

#1 Leaky toilets

I don’t know about you, but I know that, where I live, in Israel, leaky toilets are ignored everywhere.

It is a disgrace!

I worked for a big multinational company that has at least 5 buildings in an industrial park.  Each building has at least 6 WC rooms, each WC room has from 6-12 toilets each.  I only visited the women’s WC rooms.  I often found at least 1/2 of the toilets dripping water and dripping faucets, too. For a long time I would go to the maintenance people and tell them about the toilets, but no action was taken. Then I wrote email to the bosses. Still no action was ever taken.  

You can go into office buildings, shopping Malls and the toilets are running like crazy.  Simple store front offices, like where I got my hearing aids.  It is the same thing.  I went to the secretary to tell her that they really should get their toilet fixed and she looked at me as if I should mind my own business.

When you consider that Israel is in the middle of a 5 year drought, right now, this is really everyone’s business!  If not the owners of these buildings, whose business should it be? All that drinkable water that is dripping down the toilets.  Just think of the volume!

Drips Per Minute	Water Wasted Per Month	Water Wasted Per Year
10	43 Gallons (for litres x3.7)	526 Gallons
30	130 Gallons	1,577 Gallons
60	259 Gallons	3,153 Gallons
120	518 Gallons	6,307 Gallons
300	1,296 Gallons	15,768 Gallons

leaky Toilet Patrol

I keep wishing that the Israel Ministry of the Environment would start a “leaky Toilet Patrol”. Patrollers would go into public and semi public buildings and check for leaky toilets and faucets. They could give out citations and, if they were plumbers, offer to do the work for a price. There must be some way to set up such systems with environmental or water authorities.  Do this world wide and stop the Leaky toilet epidemic!

Does everybody expect businesses to monitor and fix their
own toilets?

I looked up “leaky Toilet Patrol” on Google. 
I did not find one concerned website! 
NOT ONE!

Please, if you know of such a “leaky Toilet Patrol”
Please tell me about it.

OR maybe you want to start one.   
Seems like it could start this way…..

1. Talk to your local Water Authority.  Discuss how to help them.
2. Find a person to spend the day visiting public and commercial buildings with a report form.
3. The report form could look something like this:

Leaky Toilet Patrol report 
Date_____________
Building Name_______________________if any
address____________________
street______________________
City, etc. ___________________

#1-WC-room Location: # floor, location on that floor east-west-north-south
   #of toilets in WC room
   #of toilets dripping/leaking
   #of faucets leaking, if any

#2-WCroom Location: # floor, location on that floor east-west-north-south
   #of toilets in WC room
   #of toilets dripping/leaking
   #of faucets leaking, if any

#3-Are there more WC rooms with leaks in the same building? #_______

? Did the patroller talk to building owner / manager / maintenance after inspection? (circle one)
   Telephone number of person talked to _________________________.
? Did the patroller offer to send plumber to fix the toilets, etc.?
   Results, if any ____________________________________________.
? Did patroller say that Water Authority would send warning message.
   Circle one:        yes          no

Name of Patroller __________________________
Logo, address, tell number and Name of Company authorising the Patrol

Maybe you could give the building people a flyer…….

Quick Check for Toilet Leaks?
>>You can check it easy and fast. 
>>Just put a little colored liquid in the toilet’s water tank. (if a leak is not obvious). 
>>If the color starts to show up in the toilet bowl, you have a leak…maybe only 10 drops per minute. 
 
10 drops/min wastes:
1.5 gal or 5.55 litres/day = enough for 2.7 people without water
10.5 gal or 39 litres/week = enough for 19.5 people without water
43 gal or 159 litres/month = enough for 79.5 people without water

This is #1 Leaky toilets

I am going to spend the next posts looking into some of the issues about water – sanitation – toilets.  No doubt, all you people working in this area, you know that most of the parts needed to change the “flush toilet/treatment plant system” to a more circular system are already or almost developed.  To harmonise with planet Earth……………………

This is almost more important than the EV’s. Save Drinking Water!!

Human Population Growth has made this a very important Issue and we have only 12 years to cool off planet Earth.  This is really a Waste Rush!  There are jobs a-plenty and money to be made in all areas of using the Value of Waste.  The Toilet Board Coalition says so…

Sanitation is every business’ Business.

The Sanitation Economy presents vast potential for global economic growth while dealing with one of the most urgent grand challenges of our time, achieving universal access to improved sanitation (SDG6). It gives market price to toilet provision, products and services, biological resources, data and information to provide benefits across business and society.

#1 Leaky toilets

(Being in my 7th decade, I look to the younger generations.  I find Bernelle’s thoughts and those of many others that she is talking to, very promising.  You, the younger people are going to find the way! …..Lesley)

One of my searches lead me to Bernelle Verster’s blog.  Bernelle lives in Cape Town, South Africa.  Do you remember what happened in Cape Town?   

“I am a biologist, chemist, now a bioprocess engineer. As part of the Future Water Institute at the University of Cape Town we work across disciplines to find solutions – engineers, legal, economists, anthropologists, scientists, everyone.”  

26/12/17 Cape Town
“We’re in drought, so we don’t have water to flush toilets. The nutrients in shit should be re-used, and that is difficult when we dilute it with loads of water and mix it with god knows what else to be shipped off somewhere to be so-called ‘treated’. Also, flushing toilets mean we are flushing nutrients into receiving water bodies (even with excellent wastewater treatment, we’re still not doing well enough). So flushing is just a stupid idea. 
If you don’t know already, I have a dry toilet. I love my dry toilet. It’s indoors, I’m affluent, privileged. This is not about toilets for poor people. This is about dry toilets for everyone.
But, many people don’t like the idea of looking at their shit, so we’re trying to get the experience of the white ceramic sparkly-clean ‘flush and forget’ ‘out of sigh(t) out of mind’ toilet, (along) with the cost-saving benefits and environment and resource recovery goodness of dry toilets.”

“[…] We are saying that we cannot carry on with water flushing toilets. Nobody can. Not even the rich people. And so it’s trying to move away from this idea that a flushing toilet is something to aspire to.” 

………..said Mr. Neil Macleod, in October 2012  – manager of the large-scale project for eThekwini Municipality (Durban, SA), – free basic water supply and UDDTs (urine diversion dehydration toilets) provided to rural and peri-urban areas on the household level.

Well, that would help at least…………………………………………………..

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My exploration continues with a little history….. #2 below.

The 7 posts on water-sanitation-toilets

7 posts on the subject of water-sanitation-toilets, covering the following issues:
#1 Leaky toilets are everyone’s business!
#2 The beginning of Wasted Water.   
#3 The natural way to empty our Bowels?   
#4 We have 12 years to cool off planet Earth!  
#5 Dry Toilet sanitation systems for our growing population 
#6 Online Tools to Re-Invent with the Have-Nots.  
#7 What is wrong with the Have’s?   Plenty!   

and two on a water Super Plant – Vetiver
Termite Eradication Naturally? …Ask WasteRush To Search
Vetiver System Proven I Say, “Heal The Land With Vetiver”