It’s only natural to experience guilt and shame in the restroom. Look at what you’ve contributed to the planet — wasteful and revolting! But a local company brings relief with a nifty little gadget called The PerfectFlush: a sleek little control panel that replaces your toilet’s flushing handle with two buttons, one for a big flush and one for a small one. Boasting a 30-50% water savings, the PerfectFlush might just calm your weary anxieties.
We have Brondell to thank for bringing this idea, commonplace in Europe, to the United States. (You may recognize the company’s name; they’re also responsible for a device that’s half toilet seat and half squirt-gun). It’s easy to hook up, and super-green: cleverly powered only by a battery and by incoming water pressure, the company estimates that it’ll save you around $100 a year in water bills. The technology has proven particularly popular with hotels, such as Hotel Griffon near the Transbay Terminal; they’ve seen substantial water savings since installing the devices in every room.
The project is so far ahead of its time, in fact, that the EPA lacks the ability to acknowledge it with a rebate program. The only toilet rebates offered by the EPA are for replacing the entire apparatus; it simply hasn’t occurred to the agency to offer rebates for retrofit devices. Oh, federal government, why must you lag forever behind?
Now is a particularly important time to install water-saving devices: although there’s been an inexplicable news-silence on the topic, San Francisco’s water rates will soon begin to creep up, a little a year for the next five years. A homeowner who is paying $40 a month now will pay $70 in 2013. “But even if you don’t save money, it feels good,” a Brondell rep told the Appeal; after all, saving water is simply the right thing to do.
