A Call to Action

Environmental Activism from the Comfort of Your Own Home

There's nothing like going to sleep at night knowing that you've left the world a little better for your time in it. Granted, by the time you've made the drive in to work, put in a full day of "Yes, sir" and "No, sir", driven back to your domicile, walked the dog, cooked supper, and done the dishes, there isn't a whole lot of time or energy left to deal with the world's problems. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can indeed make a difference, and right from the comfort of your own home. A pressing issue that impacts on countless others is the environment, so why don't I share with you a few of the things that Meghan and I do (or don't do) to try to minimize our environmental impact? Come on, this won't take long, and who knows, maybe you'll be privvy to a few personal details about us that you never knew!?

Water

Go into the washroom and look down into that white porcelain toilet bowl.... that water has been carefully treated to make it drinkable (although everyone except the cat prefers a glass to the thundermug). I get a pang of guilt whenever I have to pee into such clean, potable water. This guilt is a new development for me as I was raised to always flush and, like most Canadians, expected to urinate my precious 500 mL into at least 6000 to 13000 mL of clean odourless water. Amazing how hard we try to waste such a beautiful and necessary resource! I will consume 30 to 50 times more water than a person in a developing country. Nearly every Canadian expects to instantly dilute their urine in a volume of water that is 10 to 20 times greater than the actual volume of urine. Math, anyone?
A conservative estimate would be 3 urinations a day multiplied by 32,000,000 Canadians multiplied by 12000 mL (6L models are mandatory in Ontario in new construction since 1996, but are certainly not common yet) TOTALS 1,152,000,000 litres of drinking water FLUSHED every day! Yep, that's over ONE BILLION LITRES. Your personal contribution would be 3.6 litres/day, or 1314 litres per year. This, in my mind, is unacceptable. And so... we've adopted this rule:

If it's brown, flush it down.
If it's yellow, let it mellow.

Assuming our household works like most other households, Meghan and I use the toilet at nearly the same times twice a day, first thing in the morning and in the evening. The last one to leave the house in the morning flushes the toilet, and the last one to pee at night can do the same. We could be more anal in our approach ;) but this method minimizes the 'gross' factor and the smell from urine sitting all day in a small space. On top of that, I've adjusted the float valve in the toilet tank so that our flush volume is less.
My personal mandate is to pee outside as much as possible, but don't tell my landlords that's why our grass is growing so well!
Since this information is getting up-close and personal, I'll let you in on a little-known secret. I'm an environmental vigilante. Granted, my terrain is limited to the washroom, but I think the effects are fairly large. What exactly do I do in the washroom? Well, any time I'm in a public washroom, I whistle loudly whilst I quietly lift off the toilet tank cover and adjust the float valve or float arm, reducing the volume that is flushed each and every time! The float valve can be simply slid down its vertical arm by squeezing two clips. A float arm (if on a metal arm) can be bent slightly so that the ball sits lower in the tank, effectively shutting off the refill mechanism sooner. Give the toilet a test-flush before you leave the stall cackling, just to make sure the ball doesn't interfere with the flapper in the bottom of the tank.
Our landlords are on the ball and have planted lots of trees on the property. The shade helps conserve soil moisture and the lawn looks and grows better with less watering. I try to cut the lawn as infrequently as possible as long grass conserves soil moisture better than short grass.
We don't use a hose or pressure washer to clean the sidewalk or driveway. A broom has done the trick for hundreds of years and seems to do a decent job still when attached to a strong back and a weak mind.

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