WaterSense: How to find money saving toilets & faucets
Posted on: April 30, 20094 comments so far (is that a lot?)
Look for the WaterSense logo when buying toilets and faucets.
Water is a fast-depleting natural resource. By 2013, 36 U.S. states are predicted to face catastrophic water shortages. You can save yourself some money and water by looking for the EPA’s new WaterSense label. It’s like EnergyStar for water.
The WaterSense program was designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to encourage water efficiency in the U.S. The WaterSense label is used on toilets and faucets that are certified by independent laboratory testing to meet rigorous criteria for both performance and efficiency.
Faucets
Kitchen and bathroom faucets account for more than 15% of all indoor household water use. This is more than 1 trillion gallons of water across the United States each year. WaterSense-certified faucets and accessories can reduce water flow by 30% or more without sacrificing performance. We could save billions of gallons each year by retrofitting the country’s 222 million sink faucets with models that have earned the WaterSense certification.
Toilets
Caroma dual flush .8 / 1.6 gallon
Accounting for about 30% of total water consumption annually, toilets use more water than any other appliance in the home. Before 1980, toilets used up to 5 gallons per flush. Improvements from that time through 1994 made 3.5 gallons the industry standard. Compare that to WaterSense-certified models of today that use 1.28 gallons per flush or less. By replacing a single 3.5 gallon per flush model toilet with a high-efficiency toilet, your household will save almost 4,000 gallons of water per person every year.
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May 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
One piece toilets are sleeker, easier to clean, more leak proof.
May 4th, 2009 at 5:02 am
[...] We were skimming their site and found something that might be pretty useful to us in the future. They had a post on water saving toilets and faucets. The EPA has created a new program called “Water Sense” that will allow customers to look for their logo when they purchase new toilets in stores. The intention was to create a demand for water saving appliances and hopefully use that demand to spur the market into better, more sustainable products. I think this is a great idea because of the drastic over use of water that most people have become accustomed to.To read more about this program go here. [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
[...] to PottyGirl, if a family of four replaces one 3.5 gpf toilet made between 1980 and 1994 with a WaterSense toilet, they can save $2,000 over the lifetime of the toilet. Dual-flush toilets give an option of [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
[...] per flush (gpf). Some use as much as 7 gallons every time you pull that lever!! Compare that to WaterSense-certified models of today that use 1.28 gallons per flush or [...]