Toilet trash-can?
Posted Mar 22, 2011 05:20:38 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO – Everyone knows what should go into a toilet, but a survey suggests most Canadians admit to flushing things that shouldn’t be going down the drain.
Things like left-over food, hair, bugs and cigarette butts.
Sending such items swirling down the drain wastes six to 20 litres of fresh, clean water with each flush.
The online Ipsos Reid survey of more than two-thousand Canadian adults finds 55 per cent of respondents believe fresh water is our most important natural resource and 78 per cent say they’re trying to conserve it.
But almost three quarters admit to flushing items that could go in a garbage can or composter.
The study was endorsed by the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the United Nations Water for Life Decade.
Group official Bob Sandford says Canadians claim to care about conserving water and yet knowingly waste it.
Canadians use an average of 329 litres of water per day.
Sandford says water is a real bargain here, which is another reason Canadians are clueless to its value.
He says in France water costs four times more and in Germany, water costs almost seven times more — adding the average daily domestic water use in those countries is less than half of what it is in Canada.
The poll, conducted during the second week of January, has a probable margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
