Eco-Friendly Bathrooms
In the world of eco-friendly bathrooms, simpler usually means better. The most eco-friendly toilet will always be an outhouse. Outhouses are typically composting toilets that simply contain waste and control its progression into fertilizer, they use no water and when you have used them for long enough they yield a wonderful compost that you may not want to raise your food in, but is wonderful for all other plants.
Obviously, most people are not too keen on trudging to the shack out back to do their business just because its good for the environment, but there is good news for the in-betweeners who would like to help out the environment as much as possible, while having a normal indoor bathroom. Lately water saving toilets have been gaining in popularity. The result being that many brands have been developing new and more water efficient toilets, some of which use under a gallon of water for each flush. Niagara Conservation’s Stealth toilet is one of the most efficient, using just 0.8 gallons of water per flush. And while it is good for the environment, it could also save you around 20,000 gallons of water a year and over £80 in water bills.
Toilets are some of the biggest water wasters, but showerheads and sinks also suffer from correctable inefficiencies. Getting shower heads and sinks that have aerating attachments help to reduce the amount of water used. By introducing air into the water it maintains the volume output of the shower head or sink, while reducing water usage.
Another way to save energy in the bathroom is to buy a more efficient hot water heater. Typical water heaters have tanks and use insulation and a heating element to maintain the temperature of the water so that hot water is always available. This process involves heating much more water than will be used and keeping it hot at all times, which is of course is not very energy efficient. The alternative to the classic tank water heaters is a tankless water heater, which uses a super heating mechanism to heat water as it is needed, without having to maintain the temperature of the water at all times. Thereby saving a significant amount of energy overall.
Other ways to save energy in the bathroom is to follow the energy efficiency guidelines that can help to make the rest of your house as energy efficient as possible. Using flourescent bulbs in your bathroom’s light fixtures and practicing ecologically conscious behaviour are always musts. After all, the ideas of being ecologically friendly and sustainable are a reaction to our current practices, an acknowledgement that things need to change. Although an aerated shower head may never be able to replace a gushing full flow model, it is a compromise between comfort and sustainability and every day there are an increasing number of new options out there making these compromises more and more appealing and easy to live with.
For information on how Abbeywood can help make your bathroom more eco friendly, Call us now: 01733 380939