Water Efficient Toilet: Saving water flush after flush

November 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

water efficient toilet
New toilets don’t have any problems with water efficiency. All toilets that are manufactured today are low flush, meaning they need only a few liters of water to flush down our urine or poop. But what will you do if you have an old toilet? Replacing it with a low-flush toilet can be costly. What can you do to reduce the water your old toilet is using?

Every time you flush, at least 6 liters of clean water is used. If you are using an old toilet, you can be using at most 4 gallons of water every flush. That’s clean water. How to save water? It’s simple. Flush only when you need to. Flush when the odor in the bathroom is unbearable. Flush after you pooped of course. But you don’t need to flush the toilet when you threw a tissue in it or if your urine is not yellowish or not smelly.

For those who have older toilets, you can reduce the quantity of water in the tank by displacing it. All you have to do is place a half-a-gallon plastic container filled with pebbles inside the tank. This way the tank will be filled with half the quantity of water as when there’s no displacement. This will be a water efficient toilet.

For most older models of toilets, this is effective. But there are others that don’t flush out all the urine or poop with a smaller amount of water. If this is the case, then it is time to upgrade to a low-flush toilet. It is costly but if you think about the savings that you will have in your water bill for years and years to come, it’s worth it.

If the water in your toilet tank is leaking, you are wasting hundreds of gallons of water every week. How to know if your toilet is leaking? Just drop some food color to the water inside the tank. Check if the water inside the bowl is colored after a few minutes. If it does, your toilet is leaking and you need to call your plumber.

I don’t know how much water is used for the toilet flushing in the Philippines but I read that almost 5 billion gallons of water is used for the flushing of toilets in the US. If the Philippines have 50 million toilets and each toilet is used 5 or more times every day, we can save a LOT if we just make sure we have water efficient toilets.

Filed Under: Everyday Green, Green Homes, Water Conservation Tagged With:

Going green means going vegetarian?

November 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

turkey

Do you know that more than 600 million pounds of turkey are consumed by Americans during the Thanksgiving dinner? That’s only one dinner. Turkey is the Thanksgiving dinner staple for most Americans.

There are a number of environmentalists who are encouraging us to give up the turkey and all the meat this Thanksgiving. They say that one way of being an environmentalist is to give up meat?

What is the link between loving the earth and loving that delicious melt-in-your-mouth baby back ribs?

They say that hundreds of acres of rainforest are denuded every year in the US to make way for cattle farming. The effect of the excrement produce by industrial farms of hogs and chicken give out toxic gases that are harmful to the top soil and to the health of the people working on or living near the industrial farms.

I have a cousin in Iowa who lives near a hog industrial farm. She said that she bought a small oxygen tank because she gets headache and she felt dizzy every time she passes by the hog farm on her way to work every day. She says that people who work at that farm becomes really sick. The child of her neighbor was rushed to the hospital because she couldn’t breathe. My cousin said that this is because of the toxic gases emitted by the feces of the pigs in the farm.

I found it surprising at first because I thought that the excrement just smelled bad. I didn’t thought that the bad smell carried with it toxic gases. I read up on the topic and discovered that it is the hydrogen sulfide in the excrement that is toxic to the health of people who are inhaling it.

I just realized that it can be very hard to go green. The people from Greenpeace is saying that you are not an environmentalist if you are not a vegetarian. It is very hard to give up meat. How can I give up steak? Thanksgiving will not be complete without the turkey.

It’s too much to take right now. I’ll just focus on one small thing at a time. We bought a certified organic turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner. It means that the preparation of the turkey is environmental-friendly, no hormones, no chemical injections, no inhumane treatment of animals (doesn’t sound right but you know what I mean).

Maybe what I can do is take baby steps. I don’t think I can be a vegetarian. But I can eat meat that is organic. I can eat more organic vegetables. That’s the first step.

Filed Under: Toxic Gases, Vegetarianism Tagged With: , , ,

Green Clothes

November 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

green clothes

We wear clothes basically to cover our body and to protect our body from sun exposure or cold weather. But do we really buy clothes mainly because of this reason? For most of us, buying clothes is about looking good or at least not being teased as a “manang” or “baduy”.

I visited Alabang Town Center this weekend and I was surprised at the long lines of teenagers buying Havaianas flip-flops. It was only 11:00 am and the line was extending to the aisle of the mall. I saw this one young girl around 13-14 carrying 3 pairs of the same style but with different colors. Wow!

It’s the same with shoes and clothes. Philippines is really an ironic country. People say that this is a poor country but if you visit any mall in the metro during the weekend, you’ll ask yourself if you’re really in a poor country.

Maybe the reason why the fashion boutiques and the department stores are all filled up during weekend especially when the weekend coincides with the pay-day is because Filipinos are heavy cloth buyers. In this country, you’ll find people dying of hunger everyday in the streets while inside the malls, people are buying fashionable clothes and 3 pairs of flip-flips!

Buying too much is always bad for the environment because when we buy more clothes, more shoes, more flip-flops that what we need, more of them will have to be manufactured. During the manufacturing of these items, of course, more energy has to be used. Also, when there are more clothes, shoes and flip-flops to be manufactured, more natural resources are needed to produce them. There will be more wastes when we got used with our clothes or when they’re not fashionable anymore or when we can’t wear them anymore.

How many flip-flops do we really need? How many different colors of skinny jeans do we really need to buy? Have you seen the pile of old shoes in your house? How are we going to dispose them?

Having green clothes may mean buying only the clothes that we really need with the aim of energy-conservation and the protection of the natural resources of the earth. Having green clothes may mean wearing hand-me-downs. It may mean buying from ukay-ukay stores. They can be fashionable but they are not from the factories. Besides, they are cheap!

Buying clothes and dressing up are regular activities in our lives but we can make it extra-special when we think about our natural resources, energy and wastes whenever we do them. Go green clothes!

Filed Under: Conservation, Energy Saving, Everyday Green Tagged With: , , ,

E-jeepney in Makati

November 21, 2008 By Leave a Comment

e-jeepney pic

I saw a very cute vehicle today while I was having walking to the office along Paseo de Roxas. It looks like an open multi-cab van. Everyday, I see the air-conditioned jeepneys plying the streets around Ayala center hence the name Ayala Loop jeep. But this is the first time that I saw this cute and colorful jeepney. Someone from behind me said e-jeepney.

An e-jeepney in Makati? Haven’t heard of that. I researched a little in the internet and I learned there are only a few e-jeepneys circling around Legazpi and Salcedo Village in Makati. It started with 2 last July but surely in a few months, we’ll see more e-jeepneys not only in Makati but in other places as well.

This is a very good idea and I hope that all jeepneys in the Philippines will be converted to electronic jeepneys. Since e-jeepneys run by rechargeable batteries and not through fuels, they can decrease our national consumption of fuel which is a non-renewable energy source.

E-jeepneys run on batteries that are charged by plugging it in electrical sockets. It’s just like charging our cell phones. They charge it overnight and the batteries last from 3 hours to whole day depending on the speed. With the heavy traffic around Salcedo Village and Legazpi Village, it probably lasts long.

Because they burn fuels, e-jeepneys don’t produce any air pollution and noise pollution. They don’t emit any smoke. They don’t ruin your ears when they accelerate like most of the ordinary jeepneys.

I overheard from someone from the street who also noticed the e-jeepney that aside from being cute, silent and clean, e-jeepneys will not reduce our consumption of fuel because fuel is used to generate electricity. But what I think is the main idea behind the e-jeepney is to eventually use other sources of energy for our electricity.

We know that we can use the energy of water falls and wind to generate electricity. When we change to e-jeepneys, it will be easier to find alternative sources of energy because the e-jeepneys don’t need fuel. They only need electricity. And electricity doesn’t necessarily have to be sourced from fuel.

The e-jeepney I saw today made me realize that a truly green Manila is still possible.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Red Lead Paint: Environmental and Health Hazard

November 19, 2008 By Leave a Comment


It’s surprising to know that there are still people who are looking for a Red Lead paint here in the Philippines. It is a paint that is used to coat galvanized sheets and iron pipes to prevent rust.

The reason why it is surprising is because lead paint is already banned in the US for years now. Here, there are still a lot of people who don’t know that lead is toxic and can pose serious danger to our health.

The lead content in the red lead paint goes into the air making it an air pollution. When it is inhaled, the lead is easily absorbed by our bodies. Very young children who are exposed to lead are in for more danger because they have a small amount of blood. Even a small amount of lead can poison their blood.

The lead content in red lead paint can also get into our bodies of water. The lead content of water pipes that are painted with red lead paint seep into the water that goes directly to our faucets. That is why you seldom see people drinking from their faucets here in Manila.

Lead and lead pain is toxic. We should not use red lead paint. It is already banned. If there are hardware stores that still sell old stock of red lead paint, you should inform them that they are toxic and can lead to poisoning and other bad health effects.

DON’T USE RED LEAD PAINT.

Filed Under: Pollution, Toxic Wastes, Transportation Tagged With: ,
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