Did you know about toilet recycling? Most don’t. While consumer products continue to evolve, the saying, “out with the old, in with the new” becomes more and more relevant. As older toilets are replaced with dual flush, high-efficiency models -- plain and simple there are toilets that need to be recycled. To get started, recycling your toilet can be as simple as making a few phones calls. Your first step should be to call your city’s recycling center to see if a recycling program exists. Your second call should be to your city’s solid waste service provider to ask if toilets left at the curb or brought to its dump are recycled or trashed. Lastly, there is always the option of keeping it, and re-purposing it for a personal project around the house. Whether 1, 2 or 3 -- you immediately become a staunch supporter of green initiatives.
Toilets are made, primarily, of porcelain, which is generally comprised of clay. Porcelain product can often be ground down and used to make new porcelain products. Two examples are: recycled toilet porcelain, which makes an excellent porous drainage material, and ground porcelain, which makes a great substitute for gravel, and is often used as road base in and for state highways.
Going green is becoming more and more important everyday with the waste management and consumption issues facing the world. Recycling your toilet helps you go green because it keeps porcelain out of landfills, saving space, and can be used to create other materials, so they don’t have to be manufactured.
Fireclay Tile, located in San Jose, CA is a ceramic tile manufacturer trying to make the most out of recycled materials. (Learn more about them HERE.) National Public Radio recently did a piece about them. You can read about it HERE. Good work!
So if you are getting a new toilet, or for any reason have to get rid of one -- support green initiatives and recycle it!
We’ll leave you with a cool fact:
The Chesapeake Bay used crushed toilets and other porcelain items to shape artificial oyster reefs, in order to combat decades of disease, pollution, and habitat loss in that region. Environmentalist came up with this idea to revive native oyster populations.