Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after, right? Well, maybe 400 hundred years ago but plumbing has come a long way, Now, when you talk Jack and Jill, you are talking a bathrooms with two doors, accessible from two rooms. Among all the plumbing advances, the toilet is the most revered. And for good reason, the toilet gets us out of a lot of crap – literally. But how did we wind up finding efficient toilets among all the ways we could have invested in our plumbing system?
The best known ancestor of the modern toilet was in Richmond Palace during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, around 1600. She refused to use it because it was loud. Imagine that. Once sewage systems were created, we really got a roll with commercial lavatories. By 1950, toilets were using 7 gallons or more per flush. Imagine the size of a gallon of milk, duplicated seven times, whirling in your commode. These toilets were huge water wasters.
By the 1960s, we were down to 5.5 gallons per flush and in the 1980s, around 3.5 gallons. This coincides with diets like Atkins, South Beach and Weight Watchers so I know what you might be thinking. However, human feces remained the same size while water use per flush declined. No trickiness about it. Finally, we arrive at today. Today toilets use less than 1.6 gallons per flush. Finding efficient toilets took a while, but we came a long way.
But of course, we seek to go further. Bill and Melinda Gates recently hosted a toilet-design competition called Reinvent the Toilet Fair. Submissions were encouraged to make a more environmentally-friendly toilet. Meanwhile in Taiwan, they idolize the toilet in a themed restaurant where diners sit atop a commode while dining and eating from commode-shaped dishes.
So, there you have it. Where the toilet has been and where it shall go.
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