A few months ago I attended a green building show in Boston and was able to check out Toto’s line of water saving toilets.  Their display at the green show was rather impressive and it seemed to draw a good size crowd.  We were able to play with the toilets like kids without the Toto rep kicking us out!

In the picture above they use golf balls and plastic tubes to show how much “stuff” their toilets can flush without requiring a second flush.

In the picture above they show how much “stuff” makes it through the drain system without clogging.  The funny thing is that the water was turned off at the time this picture was taken and only about 50% of the total flush made it to the collection basin.  Once the rep turned on the water and reloaded the toilet bowl the entire load made it into the basin.

This is a dual flush toilet which uses .9 gallons per flush when you don’t have the need to flush a dozen golf balls and a dozen plastic water bags.  If you need to get rid of a large load then you can hit the 1.6 gallon button and flush away $20 in golf balls.

If you are looking for a water saving toilet I would suggest one of the dual flush models.  Since this was the only one on display at the green home show that I attended, I am not able to compare it to other models.  Some of the other green blogs that I read have done reviews on the Toto toilets and I have yet to see anything negative on the product line.  Until Toto sends me a free water saving toilet to test (hint Toto toilet people) I can not provide a in-house review.

Since today was good Friday and my kids did not have school we decided to go into Boston to the science museum. Armed with my camera I was hoping for some nice pictures for this blog, as you can see I failed. One of the images that I wanted to capture was the no water urinals in the men’s room. The sign above them claimed that each one can save 40,000 gallons of water per year. 40,000 gallons of water times 15 (wild guess) urinals is incredible! On three occasions I tried to take a picture but people kept coming into the bathroom. When I finally thought I was alone, someone made some noise in one of the stalls. I can’t imagine what they were thinking if they saw me with a camera in my hand and I didn’t want to stay around to find out. I don’t think that the police would believe me it I said that I was taking pictures of the urinals to post on a green site.

The water fountains at the Museum of Science also had a sign claiming that they save 15,000 or 20,000 gallons of water a year. They had some sort of motion sensing devise that would make them turn on when you bent down for a drink. I can’t figure out how a motion device saves water compared to someone having to hold down the button. If the end result is a savings of around 100,000 gallons for a large public building then it gets my thumbs up. Imagine if every public urinal and water fountain used these types of products.

I Googled “green urinal” and Google suggests “green urine”, this might explain why not many people are marketing water saving urinals as green urinals. On the same token a “green water fountain” might make people think of green scummy pond water. While water saving products are green products, I think that they will stick to marketing them as “water saving products”.