This week I am diverging from politics to continue with the theme of waste. I could of course come up with many apt toilet metaphors for politics, but I will spare you.
For the holiday break (yes I work at a University and actually got a two week break), I went home to Florida and spent part of the time staying with my folks. My parents home, built when I was in utero, is as old as I am. About 7 years ago there was a fire which left the structure intact but led to the replacement of everything else. Because of this it has more up to date insulation, wiring, HVAC, etc than most 30 year old homes. The plumbing though is still original.
After the fire, my parents installed new 1.6 gallons per flush toilets, which combined with old and poorly installed plumbing in places, has created a clogging machine in the guest bathroom. This toilet will clog every time if spartan toilet paper management techniques are not employed. It is so bad my wife refuses to use it no matter what.
The upside is and the point to this post (took me a while huh) is that this toilet forces the user to use a lot less paper. This is not scientific and I assure you no actual measurements were taken, but I think I cut my tp use by about 90%. This dramatic improvement was not at the expense of good hygiene, it just took a little conscious thought.
Of course now that I'm home and using a "properly" working toilet, I am back to my old wasteful ways. Sure I try to remember what my parents clogging toilet taught me, but I often forget. This is where businesses come in. I as a consumer want to use and purchase things that are designed to limit my stupid mindless wastefulness. Let's face it, the world is too complex and we are too busy to ALL do the right thing. I am one of the ones who try and I still am an uber waster. Government needs to regulate wasteful behavior and business needs to provide affordable and effective solutions. This is the answer, expecting people to do it out of the good of their hearts is not.
(On a side note, I stole this picture from the Treehugger blog and read this old but interesting article on how archaic and dangerous water based waste removal systems are. Makes you rethink the worst green product ever as posted by Mike way back.)
