November 23, 2003
How to Save Water
Al Gore has found a new way to help the environment: by serving on an advisory board for a company selling waterless urinals. According to Grist, although the subject isn't very sexy, Gore has always liked high tech solutions to some of our environmental problems and he believes that because this product is both high tech and a great solution to a very real problem that it worth his backing.
Indeed. In a typical commercial installation, each Falcon urinal conserves an average of 40,000 gallons of freshwater per year. Each installation also saves significant water and plumbing costs, so it's not surprising that these urinals are appearing at more and more high-profile locations, including Disney World, the Taj Mahal, and the IBM research headquarters in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Not to mention sports arenas: The Florida Marlins' Pro Player Baseball Stadium boasts 228 Falcon Waterfree urinals. With some 65,000 fans in attendance at Pro Player during each game of the World Series this year, the savings were easily 100,000 gallons per game. Not bad in an area of the country that recently had water-usage restrictions brought on by a three-year drought.
This sounds like a truly excellent way to address a critical problem (how to use water more conservatively) and is a quite innovative solution. Thanks for leading your name and your reputation to this company, Al. We need to have a lot more innovative solutions to our problems of how to make our world more sustainable. Often it is the most mundane problems waiting solutions that comprise the biggest opportunities for building a better world.
Posted by Mary at November 23, 2003 12:43 AM | TrackBack