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Your Toilet Is Not A Garbage Can
By admin | March 21, 2011
A new Canadian water attitude study shows that across Canada people are not very water-conscious nor eco-friendly. Nearly three-quarters of those asked said they use the toilet as a garbage can. Really? Do people need to be reminded that the toilet is only designed to handle and remove human waste? It seems so.
Sadly Alberta does little in this study to dispel the idea that the province has the worst environmental offenders in Canada. Albertans admit that 83 per cent of them use the toilet as a garbage can. And for this green concept the youth are far behind the rest of Canada – especially those over 55. Canadian youth are the worst offenders of flushing instead of tossing/recycling with 84 per cent using the toilet for common refuse.
Each unnecessary flush wasted between 6 and 20 liters of fresh water. It gets worse when the majority of Canadians have no clue as to how much they are paying for water with six in ten not knowing how much they pay for water to their homes and businesses. Water is currently very cheap in Canada and that could be leading to some of the wastage.
As for drinking water, 48 per cent of Canadians drink water directly from the tap with 28 per cent choosing instead to drink filtered water. Not so eco-friendly are the 21 per cent still clinging to drinking bottled water. They can of course recycle the plastic bottles but there is still the energy spent to create the bottle, fill it and ship it. For most Canadians the water from their taps are perfectly safe and in many respects is as healthy and clean as any bottled water.
Home maintenance companies routinely deal with the consequences of people flushing garbage down the toilet and into the sewer/septic systems. A backup of the sewer system and expensive repairs could be the result of improper toilet use. Educate your children when they are young to teach them what goes in the toilet and what goes into the garbage or recycle bin. A bit of prevention could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars later.
The study was commissioned by Unilever and the Royal Bank of Canada. This is the fourth release of the study and it was endorsed by the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade. Ipsos Reid undertook the poll which was conducted January 2011.
Category: Green Living, Green News
Tags: alberta, Canada, Canadian, garbage, green, water 1 Comment »
April 13th, 2011 at 1:10 am
Living in Vancouver where it is always raining it is little wonder people don’t think about conserving it. Then there are all those places across Canada where the water is not even drinkable without first boiling or otherwise treating it.