For several years, California has been facing devastating droughts. Southern Oregon, where I live, has also experienced severe drought conditions.
A large percentage of California’s water use and overuse comes from agriculture, some 80 percent, according to UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Across the state, 13 percent of California’s water use comes from residences, except in Southern California where residents have typically been using up to 54 percent of the water consumed.
Yes, we can and should plant drought-resistant native gardens. Southern California Public Radio has a helpful list of the 13 best drought-tolerant native species for California.
Yes, we can should be much smarter and more strategic about how and when we water our lawns. Some argue we should stop watering the lawn all together. Others say we should cut back slowly, hand water, and be sure to keep trees alive so we don’t destroy the micro ecosystems in our back yards.
Yes, we should turn off the water when brushing our teeth. This no-brainer can save gallons of water a day.
Catching gray water (in a bucket in your bathroom) helps too.
But there’s something else we can all do that will make a drastic and immediate positive impact on water use throughout the country: stop flushing pee.
If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
If it’s brown, flush it down.
The average person flushes the toilet 5-6 times a day. The average toilet uses about 3.5 gallons of water per flush, though this varies widely, from as little as 1.2 to as much as 7.0 gallons, depending on your toilet (source).
That’s over 19 gallons of water per person per day that each person in your home is using just to flush the toilet.
In a family of four, that means that you’re using over 76 gallons of water per day just to flush the toilet. Enough water to fill up your bathtub twice!
Stop flushing pee
There are about 39 million people in the state of California. If every Californian stopped flushing the toilet after going pee, California would save at least 624 MILLION gallons of water a day.
Stop Flushing Pee Down the Toilet, California! Oregon, Stop Too! California would save more than 624 million gallons of water per day if every Californian stopped flushing pee. Toilet decal you can get at Etsy.
Let the pee mellow, California. Let it mellow in Oregon, too. And let the yellow mellow in every other state in the union as well. If you stop flushing pee you help the environment tremendously and save money as well. A win-win for everyone.
If you’re well hydrated and you keep the toilet lid closed, you won’t notice the smell. If it gets stinky, you can always flush it.
Another option is to simply pee OUTSIDE in your backyard. That way you use no water at all and have no potential unpleasant smell in the bathroom. We are animals, after all. And anyone who enjoys hiking already knows that there’s something rather nice about peeing outside.
Another option is to pee in the shower (“go with the flow”), which will also help save millions of gallons of water per year.
Now please excuse me.
There’s some lavender in my backyard that needs “watering.”
Let it pee. Photo by Christopher Briscoe (from the book, The Baby Bonding Book For Dads).
Published: December 12, 2015
Updated: January 6, 2020
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Even if we only flush every two ‘yellow’ visits, we cut our water consumption in half.
More effective, and likely less expensive, than grey water handling, is rainwater capture. It is sadly still against the law in many parts of the US, for whatever reason. All you are doing is diverting the water temporarily.
Here in central México, it is not illegal to capture it and we do this in a place with large roof area. Rainwater is cleaner than our town or well water. When it rains here, it arrives like a firehose, so this is a great engineering opportunity! We have several cisterns of 2800liters/700 US gallons that can be filled in an evening rainstorm; a few months of the year.
I keep telling people drought is coming to México soon. Now is the time to hold your flushing!
Thanks for weighing in, Lee, and sharing your experience from Mexico. A question: For places where it is legal, do you have any advice about the easiest and most cost effective way to set up a rainwater catchment system?
Agree on the not needing to flush every time you pee! Started this ages ago so I wouldn’t wake my son when I visited the loo in the middle of the night and it’s carried on into daytime visits as well. Another tip is, close the lid EVERY time you flush. The spray from the toilet (tiny particles you can’t see but are there) contaminates everything (including your toothbrush if you leave it on the counter).
Collect your pee in a 5 gallon bucket, a home depot or Lowe’s bucket with a lid works great. Then when it is time to water your garden, fill the bucket with water and pour the diluted pee mixture into the soil around your plants. Never buy fertilizer again. What ever supplements you take orally will be watered into you garden. It is the very best way to provide the minerals that are difficult to dilute and are not absorbed well by plants, like calcium and many others. I grew the best healthiest tomatoes ever with no other supplements. I even used it between the rows of carrots.
There are published studies on pasture, proving that urine is superior to manure as a fertilizer.
Yes, great fertilizer. Look up Rich Earth Institute in Vermont. They are collecting urine and promoting the science of this practice.