Would you ever consider not flushing to save the environment?

I urinate outside whenever possible for this purpose. Defecation – only when on a field trip.

If everyone stayed mellow on the yellow, while flushing the brown down… that would save millions of gallons of otherwise wasted water, per year. The only downside is that you have to clean your toilet slightly more often…. which is very easy to do if you do it regularly (not letting any stains build up).

I flush my toilet only once or twice a day at the most, except when visitors come, then I flush it and make sure its clean for them.

@NewZen Uh huh. Man, obviously.

All the time! I’d be surprised if I flushed even 3 times a day. No biggie, just keep the seat cover down if the “look” bothers you!

If it is dark outside I just go in the front yard.

My grandma never flushed urine. We had to help her clean her apartment when she moved out. The toilet was so badly stained that it needed to be replaced.

Luckily we don’t really have to worry about water here.

What do you do if it’s red? I’ve never been sure. Seems like a waste to flush it down, but letting it mellow might frighten anyone who goes in next (I first started thinking about this with preteen male cousins visiting…“ewwww!”)

@nope Just how you supposed to keep the seat cover down when you have to use the loo….ergo, you have to open the seat cover?

@sliceswiththings “Red”?? What? Are you talking about menstrual blood?

Ya’ll, all I have to say is, if you’ve done anything more than simple urination, flush the freakin’ toilet. If you’re at your OWN dwelling IN PRIVATE and you have your own understandings amongst the dwellers, so be it. If you have company, or you are visiting, mind your manners.

Yes I am.

Many modern toilets use the half flush/full flush function. I am more in favour of this as a means to reduce waste than not actually flushing. Urine can really stink, particularly if the urinator is dehydrated.

I would consider it.. But probably not do it..
Anyone agree? Click Great Answer if you do :P

Unless the urine is too concentrated I will consider not flushing. I usually don’t at night because of the noise for other people in the house – that way it still gets flushed during the day, and so never accumulates too much.

@FireMadeFlesh :: That is one of the reasons I piss outside. It also is really loud when I go up the stairs. And the bathroom is right in the middle of three bedrooms. So I piss in the yard so I don’t wake people up.

Modern hygiene is a blessing. Sustainable development is a blessing. What we need is “smart hygiene”. Half flush/full flush functions are already outdated. Even better are flush-manual-stop versions of this. They are very common in Europe.

Depending on bladder function people pee a little bit every time (very often) or pee a whole lot a few times a day only. Half flush might be too much or not enough. Ideally a toilet would detect this automatically.

A good option for the future is replacing valuable drinking water with rainwater or desalinated water, but having two systems makes building a house more expensive.

What about these??

I’d never do that. Here, you go, you flush.

So this whole concept made sense to me when I lived in California, and our water was piped in from hundreds of miles away and wastewater dumped into an estuary where it couldn’t be recovered.

However, where I grew up, the local river provided around 4.5×10^10 gallons per day flow rate, the water was pulled out of the river upstream, and treated wastewater dumped back into the river downstream. So this always seemed like a silly concern.

Granted, water treatment & sewage treatment both require a fair amount of power (which is where the whole clean water thing doesn’t net out).

Anyway, I think a lot of this depends on where you are in the world, and what your water situation is.

(And I agree with @mattbrowne—we shouldn’t be doing things like flushing toilets, watering lawns, or taking showers in drinking water in places where that’s scarce)

I’m big on hygiene, so probably not. I flush even when I throw a tissue in the toilet. I wouldn’t want guests coming over and using a toilet that is already filled with pee,—or worse, poop!

No, I cannot stand the smell of urine.

I do as @Kraigmo, I flush the brown and let the yellow stay around when at home but I’ll flush at other people’s homes unless I know they conserve too.

@mattbrowne—You (anyone) remember the manual flushes with a tap function? The only problem was if someone (usually a kid) left it on – it would just run forever like a faucet. However, if used correctly – it would save a lot of water as you could use just as little as needed.

Absolutely – in our household, we already do that – definitely don’t flush every time we or the kids pee, that’s just crazy waste – and with poop, too…if it’s not a lot, put the lid down and that’s that…believe me, the cats’ poop smells much much worse…

@Simone_De_Beauvoir OMG!!!!! Whew!

@jbfletcherfan it’s really not such a big deal – not to us, anyway…being uncomfortable with our bodily wastes is just a sociological construct loosely based on an evolutionary principle that one must not eat one’s waste…we can give up that construct in favor of our environment

If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down

But seriously, I always flush.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Why not just have a latrine? =)

@grumpyfish because we live in a first world country and are more privileged than that
and because we live on the 3rd floor

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Right, but where do you draw the line?

And I’m really playing devil’s advocate here, but: at what point do you balance the abandonment of the social construct of indoor plumbing for the good of the environment?

@grumpyfish at whatever point you, as an individual, are comfortable

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Great Answer!

So would you say that environmentalism is subjective?

@grumpyfish it’s a movement the direction and intensity of which are subjective

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Great answer…
I was scrolling down the previous answers hoping no one would beat me to the answer you gave…
Cudos

@boffin thank you, I’d still like to hear your thoughts

@NewZen – Yes, I remember the old manual flushes with a tap function and sometimes this did happen. Well, they disappeared in the 80ies. The current ones are quite reliable.

nope, we always always flush. Even the very idea of ever not just does terrible things to me. ick. Sorry, but i’m just hyper hyper aware of bacteria/germs/nasty things lol. Also I was raised by my Grandmother and even her sisters used to joke that anything in her home that didn’t move quick enough would get bleached/disinfected/painted :-) She was an amazing teacher and I learned well. So, no, I always flush and am great friends with the bleach and disinfectant bottles.
hugs all xx

@bunnygrl I’d hate to think what your immune system is like being brought up like that. Do you tend to get sick often? Do you have any allergies?

Actually I think thats partly why she was like that. I was born very sick, my mum got bronchitis when she was carrying me, and I was born with bad lungs. I had bronchitis every winter from childhood right up till I was 15 or 16. I have asthma, even now and have a tendency towards chest infections which are truly horrible. I promise that you don’t appreciate breathing till its taken away from you. Through most of my childhood, when i was sick my Gran used to sleep in a high backed chair next to my bed because I would wake up coughing and my breathing would just stop, literally. It’s really something for anyone to love you as much as she loved me, and I miss her terribly.

Every year I have my annual asthma check up with the nurse at my Dr’s practice, and every year for the past 4 years she keeps saying the same thing to me “I promise if you tell me I won’t tell Dr, how many do you smoke a day?” I’ve given up trying to convince her that I’ve never smoked. You know if she just went off and had a look at my records….. lol.
hugs xx

@bunnygrl She sounds like a dedicated grandmother. Sleeping in a chair sounds easy until you’ve done it a few nights.

I was brought up in the country, and played with animals (we had about 5 sheep, a dog briefly, and a cat), played in the dirt and never really worried about hygiene too much. My immune system has been fortunately strong, and I have no allergies. I often think we are done a disservice when we are too clean.

It is a filthy habit not to flush. The waste is worth it. The water gets recycled anyway.

@beautifulbobby193 How is it filthy? It all stays in the toilet, so it doesn’t have a chance to have an effect on your health unless you’re going to go fishing around in there.