What are your arguments for or against letting it mellow if it is yellow?
And if you somehow disagree with flushing it down if it is brown, I suppose I would like to hear about that as well.
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And if you somehow disagree with flushing it down if it is brown, I suppose I would like to hear about that as well.
I get what you're saying but if the whole population of where ever you are does the same, then the water usage would be huge. and not sure if you were joking but if not, what do you do the whole time in hour long showers, jesus ! haha
tl;dr/conclusion: just flush your urine. this post isn't accounting for the increased used of cleaning products caused by urine stains, so really all of these numbers are even lower than they appear. if you actually want to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage, your energy is better spent on political actions. and if you insist on reducing consumption, stop buying avocados and turn off your air conditioning - that's gonna have magnitudes more of an effect than not flushing.
Let's do the math. Average toilet uses about 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush *ᵃ. Flushing doesn't actually use energy, but it takes energy to both
1) treat the water before it gets to your house and
2) to pump that water to your house
It takes about 1 kWh to treat 1,000 gallons of water (3.785 m³) *ᵇ. That translates to about 0.0016 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.0016 kWh in order to treat the amount of water your toilet flushes in a single flush.
It takes about 3,300 kWh to pump 1 million gallons of water (3785 m³) *ᶜ. That translates to about 0.00528 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.00528 kWh in order to pump that 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush.
If we add those two together, we get 0.00688 kWh needed to pump and treat the water every time you flush. Let's try and put that amount of energy into reference.
So, let's see how much energy we would save if every single household in America flushed one time less per day. There are about 125.7 million households in the US *ᵈ. That would translate to about 864,816 kWh per day, assuming every household flushed exactly once less than they usually do. Let's put that figure into reference.
sources
a: https://www.savingwater.org/indoors/toilets/how-much-water-does-your-toilet-use/
b: https://www.esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/FINAL_EECI-WWU_TR001-12_Resized.pdf--
c: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/water/us-water-supply-and-distribution-factsheet
d: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410222
e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_consumption
f: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
g: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/air-conditioning
fairs man, you convinced me!
It still wouldn't compare, fortunately.
And I'm a woman with very thick, long hair. I wash it, condition it, mask it. I scrub the budding calluses on my feet and moisturize, then I shave most of my body.
Granted, hour-long showers only happen once a week, because I only wash my hair once a week, so my everyday showers are more like 30 min, but you'll rip those hour-long ones away over my dead body.