On March 22, World Water Day Celebrates the World’s Most Important Resource

There is no natural resource more important than water.

For years, people have been calling water “the oil of the 21st century” but we think that analogy understates water’s importance, because there is no substitute for fresh, drinkable water. If the world starts running low on oil, we can use alternate fuel sources. But what if the world ever starts running low on water? Our very survival would be at stake.

With World Water Day approaching on March 22, here are some ways businesses and communities are working to protect our invaluable global water supplies.

Using less water

The simplest way to protect water supplies is, naturally, using less water. And since we invented the flushometer in 1906, we’re experts on the subject. Here are just a few examples:

• Since installing Sloan flushometers throughout Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the ballpark has saved approximately 40,000 gallons of water per game, 81 games a year.
• Los Angeles’ Union Station uses Sloan dual-flush technology to reduce flush volumes by more than 30%, saving more than 16,000 gallons a day.
• Sloan worked with Disneyland to enable water savings of up to 30 percent in its restrooms, part of a resort-wide conservation program that has saved more than 1 billion gallons of water since 2009.

Using reclaimed water

Why do people flush toilets with fresh drinking water?

That’s a question many communities and building owners are now asking, and many are realizing that flushing toilets with reclaimed water is a solution that makes better sense.

• San Francisco’s city code now mandates that any new construction or substantially renovated structure over three stories must provide separate piping to supply non-potable water. The city’s Public Utilities Commission Headquarters saves 1.5 million gallons of fresh water a year by flushing toilets with reclaimed water.
• Houston’s Bank of America Tower uses reclaimed water from its rooftop garden to flush toilets—with the help of Sloan’s Reclaimed Water Flushometers—to help the facility reduce its water bills by up to 80%.

Protecting Fresh Water Sources

Reducing usage is an essential step in preserving global water supplies, but so is protecting the places water comes from. The World Water Day website talks about the importance of “Preserving the ‘Earth’s Kidneys’”—the wetlands that help control floods, mitigate droughts, naturally disinfect wastewater, and retain carbon.

We happen to be based near the Great Lakes, the world’s largest source of fresh water, and we strongly encourage regional efforts to:

• Help organizations design facilities to use less energy and more sustainable energy sources
• Make it worthwhile for facilities to build wetlands into exterior landscapes
• Promote facilities built for storm water sustainability, including green roofs that absorb rainwater and containment systems that filter water before it hits waterways

Getting Involved on World Water Day

The World Water Day website offers a wonderful map of events happening worldwide the week of March 22. We’re excited—three of them are within an hour’s drive of Sloan headquarters!

If you care about the planet’s water supply as much as we do, we hope you’ll find a World Water Day event near you. It’s a day worth celebrating, and it couldn’t be more important.

Sloan helps architects, designers, engineers and building owners stylish, sustainable commercial restrooms. Like to know more? Talk to Sloan!