
Just last night we listened to a lecture by Charles Jencks, who invented the term
"adhocism", "
the art of living and doing things ad hoc- using materials at hand, rather than waiting for the perfect moment or "proper" approach. As a principle of design, it begins with everyday improvisations, such as bottles for candle holders and tractor seats on wheels for dining chairs."
Professor Jencks would probably love this toilet themed restaurant in Taipei. It was inspired by a Japanese cartoon featuring rest room images; the toilet themes run through the food and drinks menus. We hope, for this one time only, that the furniture was not recycled....

Here on Treehugger there is no shortage on the scoop on
alternative toilets for those among us who desire better poopers - nevertheless, not everyone is fortunate enough to have the luxury of choice. Right at this moment, the
India Habitat Centre of New Delhi is playing host to the 7th
World Toilet Summit from October 31 to November 3, with delegates from over 44 nations this year discussing how to provide affordable, environmentally friendly and basic access to sanitation for the estimated 2.5 billion people in the world who do not have access to a toilet, a number that the
U.N. Millennium Development Goals hopes to cut in half by 2015.
With exhibits from abroad and locally, many manufacturers’ products ranged from the colourful to the technologically imaginative.
Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the NGO
Sulabh International – which has already provided 6,500 simple composting public toilets in India that converts waste into water, fertilizer and biogas – said that it is not a matter of technology only, but also of execution and government policy....

Miscea has introduced their new Sensor Activated Faucet, a pretty fancy little gadget that features lasers (engraved glass), hands-free soap and lotion dispenser and temperature control, and motion-sensitive LEDs and water control. That's all pretty cool, but here's what we like: a potential for a 70% reduction in water use, thanks to the motion-controlled faucet. The touch-free interface, which is designed to do your bidding by sensing your needs (when you put your hands near it), automatically shuts off when you don't need the water -- when you're soaping your hands or brushing your teeth -- so you won't waste a drop. Combine it with a
solar-powered water faucet and we'll really have something. Thanks to Nandini for the tip!
::Miscea via
::Bornrich ...

Designer Scott Amron, whose electricity-themed designs have been featured
here and
here on TreeHugger, is no one-trick pony. He also works in the water medium, and has designed a rather ingenious toothbrush to make it easier to rinse when you're done brushing. "Brush & Rinse" employs a couple well-placed holes to redirect water from the faucet, switching your brush from "clean" to "rinse" by creating a water fountain that makes rinsing a quick and easy affair.
Says Amron, "No one should be using disposable cups for rinsing after brushing. No one should have to wash a glass or cup every time they rinse. No one should have to lap water from their hand. No one should be forced to slurp excess water from toothbrush bristles. Current methods of getting water into our mouths are sloppy, create waste, and place unnecessary stress on our bodies. And, people love water fountains."...

In an example of what has be the perfect companion to the
Dream Door fold-out bed, we present
Mister Miser, the magical folding urinal that requires a scant 10 ounces of water per flush. TreeHugger loves
space-efficient, folding design and water efficiency (though it doesn't hold a candle to
this flushless wonder); we just never thought we'd see the two put together in this truly weird invention.
If saving water and space is your thing, and discreet, folding urinals fit your aesthetic, this baby can be had
here. Learn more about its miserly ways at
::Mister Miser via
::Gizmodo...

As
other gadgets we've featured have helped to show, it's a lot easier to conserve when you know how much you're already using; this is the idea behind the InSight, InMind personal water meter. Like a
Home Joule or
PowerCost home energy monitor for water, this killer concept by Adam Kereliuk tracks your daily water usage throughout your house; at the end of the month, it's easy to see how much you've conserved/wasted.
The real-time monitoring capability of such a device is what gives something like this an advantage over just carefully reading your water bill every month (and would be especially handy for apartment dwellers who don't see their water bills); presumably, you could get out of the shower, read the meter and go, "Holy cow, I just used 25 gallons of water! Damn!" Let's see this concept get made!
::Ubergizmo via
::Apartment Therapy: Green...

TreeHugger has floated the idea of
composting toilets for houses before; the consensus among commenters was
"Composting toilets are NEVER going to make it into the main stream market. Debating it is silly." Or is it? Ontario Green Party candidate
Shane Jolley says it's time to allow builders to take toilets in new subdivisions off the pipe.
"People have an aversion to dealing with our own waste, but this type of toilet uses far less water and makes far fewer demands on our resources. There's work to be done educating people about how compost toilets work and the benefits, but there should be financial incentives and effort made to implement this concept."
The Star continues: For generations, we've spent vaults of money to purify and pump water to our homes. Then we foul it and pump the results to sewage plants, to spend more making it clean enough – we hope – to dump into our lakes and rivers....
Jessica Nebel's Take-Away Sink is just what it sounds like -- a sink that doubles as a bucket, so you can take it away with you. This double functionality serves a double purpose: you can use your sink as a bucket (which, of course, negates the need for you to have a random bucket lying around) and it helps contextualize your water use and makes it easy to reuse your greywater. We could even see watering your houseplants with the water you collect when brushing your teeth. More pics after the jump.
::Jessica Nebel via
::Design Spotter...

If the "if it's yellow let it mellow" debate still rages in your home, have we got the solution for you: a waterless urinal. Though most often relegated to restaurant bathrooms and the like, urinals in the home make tons of sense: they save thousands of gallons of water and you don't have to worry about remembering to put the seat down. Add the waterless -- as in, no flushing required -- element and you've got a device that conserves a remarkable amount of water. Take this sleek option from Kohler (above); it's tubular design is not only a refreshing take on the more typical blocky designs, but it "virtually eliminates splashing". Because you don't have to flush it (more on that in a sec), it saves an astounding 40,000 gallons of water per year....

Our pals over at Core77 have launched a fun new idea: a "One Hour Design Competition," where you take an hour out of your life to conceive, sketch and render a concept for a new life-changing design. The contest is only open for a week, and the winner gets a Nintendo Wii (which you can then mod it to
run on solar power). This week's theme is water-saving designs for the bathroom, and they've already got a handful of great ideas.
"Bucket," pictured above (with a larger version below the fold), is the most "'duh' simple, elegant and low-tech" -- it's a bucket that sits in your shower and collects some of the greywater that splashes off in the shower, so you can use it for watering plants and the like -- while the more subversive "Decoy Drain" (also pictured below the fold) persistently floods the shower stall, forcing your lazy roommate to hurry up and get out. Check out
all the submissions on their forums, and get all the details at
their site. Remember, the deadline is Monday, August 13, so hurry up, save some water and win yourself a Wii.
::Core77's One Hour Design Competition...

As the name suggests, the
Green Fusion Design Center (GFDC) offers a slick combo of green building and design retail, a bookstore, and a showroom for all of their green products. Offering not just the stuff to make your home healthier and more efficient, but also the green knowledge behind the benefits of using bamboo cabinets or no-VOC paint, GFDC aims to bridge the gap between supply and demand for your greener life. The store is located in San Anselmo, California (just north of San Francisco), and recently celebrated the expansion of their showroom into a new, larger gallery space; they now claim to be the largest, most comprehensive green retail store in the Bay Area, with a product list to match. They've got a pretty wide variety of products that reads like a how-to 'hugg your home, from paints and wallcoverings like
AFM Safecoat and
American Clay Plaster to building materials like
kirei board to flooring options including
cork and
marmoleum to kitchen accoutrements like
AlterEco bamboo cabinets and
AZCAST stools and tabletop accessories...whew. ...

Normally I don’t pay much attention to television adverts. But recently I had to go through the process of buying a new washing machine, so it was with interest that I noticed Fisher&Paykel promoting their
Aquasmart machine. The first top loader sold in Australia to qualify for a
4 Star water rating. Impressive, but the energy rating still needs work. Jogged the memory though. “Haven’t I seen a hybrid top loader before?” Of course I had. It was the Staber, launched onto the US market a full dozen or so years ago. Inside this normal looking top loader is a hexagonal-like stainless steel drum that opens to the top. Staber reckon their ’Made in America’ machines will provide a return of around $300 each year for the rest of their life. Although about twice the price of a standard top loader, they calculate that considering water, energy and detergent saved over just three years of use, you are pretty much making money with their designs. They figure this based on saving a third of the water, a quarter of the energy to heat water, at least a quarter of the washing detergent and a third of the drying time (due to their efficient spins cycle). The company even have some sound reasons why their design outperforms a front loader. Interestingly, for folk on wind and solar power, Staber also claim to have ‘the most energy efficient washer available and the best choice for consumers living "off-grid,"’ as a result of only needing 110–150 watt-hours of electricity per wash load. Not being in the US, I ultimately made a different choice, but would welcome comments below from anyone with experience (good or bad) on the effectiveness of the Staber design.
::Staber Washing Machines....

Here’s yet another post that came to us via the ever diligent community at
Hugg (thanks jerryjamesstone!). While water-saving shower heads can cut back our ecological footprint drastically (which is why Simran was promoting them
on Oprah last week), there is an even easier, though perhaps not as luxurious, option - the navy shower. This is the term used for a water saving technique for showering, popularized (well, invented at least) by the navy to save precious on-board rations. The basic idea is to get yourself wet all over, as soon as you turn the shower on, and then turn it off while you soap up before, finally, rinsing off. Apparently, a typical shower takes as much as 230 L (60 US gallons) of water, while taking a navy shower can use as little 11 L (3 US gallons); one person can save 56,000 L (15,000 US gallons) per year!
This author has actually been sporadically using this technique for some time, without ever realizing it had a name, and it’s not as uncomfortable as it sounds. The only drawback is having to contend with a weird reaction from your spouse when they ask what you are doing in the bathroom, and you tell them you are taking a shower, despite the complete silence.
OK, we’re pretty sure this isn’t going to catch on with everyone, but for those of you who are deeply concerned about your water use, and willing to try something new, check out
this info over at Wikipedia for full instructions. For those not willing to part with their ten minutes in hot-water heaven, you can also see our guide to greener showers
here, and
here.
...

As John Laumer
noted earlier, there is a lot of useful stuff in pee, but we dilute it with gallons of water, send it down big pipes mixed with everything else, and suddenly we have monstrous networks of waste piping, sewage treatment plants and water shortages feeding it all. Yet as Carol Steinfeld wrote in
Liquid Gold, urine can be used "to grow food and landscapes, while protecting the environment, saving its users the cost of fertilizer, and reconnecting people to the land and the nutrient cycles that sustain them."
That's why we were so intrigued by the Swedish Separett Composting toilet that we saw at the Cottage Life Show. It separates out the urine, which can be put to use in the garden or drained to a leaching pit, and the poop, which is kept within the toilet for composting. Because the urine is removed, the volume is much smaller, and the mixture does not ferment, creating that familiar smell of overused outhouses. ...

We were at the Cottage Life Show in Toronto this weekend, but soon there might be a whole spinoff, "Compost Toilet Life Show" , there were so many new products in the alternative toilet world. One that surprised us was the Finnish Biolan- we are used to some complexity in these things and this is little more than a well insulated container with an insulated toilet seat. According to the distributor, adding a peat moss and sawdust mixture after each use and sealing it up tight generates enough heat and biological action to do the job and evaporate most of the liquid. The literature says that it can serve a family for a year without emptying.
Most of the other composting toilets we know of have mechanisms to aerate the poop and electric fans to keep the air moving; this has none of that. Can something so simple work and be odorless as the manufacturer claims?
::Biolan In Canada, email Larry @ Patronproducts.com
Biolan also makes interesting gray water handling systems and garden composting products like the "stone" shown below the fold - a big plastic composter disguised as a rock to be "inconspicuous."...

It sounds strange, but the whale faucet actually looks like a killer whale and seems set to work wonders in eliminating the use of disposable cups in household bathrooms around the planet as it enables the standard faucet to serve as a water fountain and mouth rinser all-in-one. It simply acts as an adapter that hooks on over the standard faucet, and then allows you to redirect the water flow in an upward direction just like a fountain. What to do when that's not what you need? Well that's simple too, just let the bottom of its mouth hang down and it acts like any other faucet you've ever seen. So couple all of that functionality with a
price of just $2.99, kids genuine enthusiasm for things like a novel toothbrush and their propensity to waste other things like plastic disposable cups, and I'm betting this may be one household invention that can really make a difference in your house. ...

We look forward to the upcoming launch of Dave Praeger's
Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product. The author has a
blog where we learned about a new installation of Clivus Multrum composting toilets at the
Bronx Zoo, avoiding construction of a huge septic system or expensive sewer construction, and saving over a million gallons of water a year.
Clivus Multrums are big, and usually used in commercial installations. Where we have tried them we have found them to be odour free. However, people used to a normal flush toilet don't like the idea of sitting on an open pile of compost, even though in a Clivus it can be a long way down. They have developed a system where it looks and functions like a conventional toilet using a mixture of bio-compatible soap and water to carry toilet waste to the composting system below via a conventional 4” drain line. From
Justin's earlier post, it looks like a valve toilet design.
...

Maybe you missed our
earlier post a couple of years ago on ‘elimination communication’, a process of parents and child working together so that baby can avoid wearing a diaper (or nappy). Friends have been through the whole disposable/biodegadable/cloth diaper
debate and are still looks for solutions. One, who is having her second child this month became very excited when I mentioned the prospect of rearing her child nappy free. Her eyes lit up, “Tell me more, where do I find our about it, is there a book, a website ... ?” Oh, yeh. One could start with our previous post, note above. Or read a
lighthearted take by a sceptic turned proponent. Digest a more scholarly article by
Ingrid Bauer, the woman who has raised awareness of the idea among so-called developed countries. See a
British perspective, watch an
Australian DVD, peruse a website with
translations into Dutch, German and Italian. And if that isn’t enough scoop on poop, then the subject even has its own
Wikipedia file....

TreeHugger has seen a
few different water-saving sink/toilet combinations in the past, but there's always room for one more smart implementation of graywater recycling on these pages. Take a gander at
Sinkpositive from Environmental Designworks, a handy device that cycles clean water through the faucet, for hand-washing and such, and reuses it the next time the toilet gets flushed. As we have noted
time and
time again (not to mention
How to Green Your Water), every drop of water saved is beneficial, and Sinkpositive is also a good way to visualize how much water gets used each time you flush. Upgrading to Sinkpositive's "deluxe model" adds an aerator to the faucet, which makes for a more consistent flow; either model is available with free shipping until April 21 (that's
Earth Day), and Environmental Designworks donates a portion of each sale to the National Resources Defense Council to help protect the nation's precious water resources. The standard model goes for $99, the deluxe for $119, directly from
Sinkpositive's website.
::Sinkpositive via
::Apartment Therapy: San Francisco...

Via
USA Today , Kimberly Clark Corporation has a
website where you can upload your photos and purchase oval-shaped Kleenex boxes with the images printed on the sides. First analogous object that comes to mind? Those Grecian urns with the erotically posed human figures dancing around the edge. The more innovative we get, the more things stay the same. USA reports:- “… the brand is embracing personalized products. In a world where consumers can customize their Nike shoes, M&M candies and even their Heinz ketchup labels, the Kleenex box is jumping into the fray” Cost is $4.99 plus shipping. Per company policy, no hate messages, violence, nudity or unapproved company trademarks. So much for my Grecian urn idea. Before you jump to a comment, please qave a look at our questions, pros, and cons list, below the fold....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.