Ash Wednesday | Flush away green design

In a time when responsible environmentalists are questioning global warming, I still believe that even if the polar bears aren’t in immediate jeopardy, there are many other reasons for conservation. Preserving our resources makes sense, finding alternative fuels makes sense and protecting endangered species makes sense. And as an architecture student, I am constantly thinking about sustainable design and what that truly means. Perhaps because of that, I am particularly frustrated when green design simply means bad design.

All this talk about sustainability may seem a little abstract, so let me put it in concrete terms: my toilet doesn’t work. It is not because I use it obsessively or flush things I shouldn’t. My toilet doesn’t work because I live in a newly renovated high rise dorm where eco-friendly low-flow toilets have been installed.

For most high rise dwellers, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Clogged toilets and biweekly visits from the plumber have been a regular occurrence for years. The University has been introducing low-flow toilets in response to a water-conservation law that requires toilet manufacturers to reduce the gallons of water per flush from 3.5 to 1.6 gallons.

College senior Jessica Butler lived in a newly renovated apartment on the 16th floor of Harrison College House as a sophomore. Despite the new fixtures and freshly painted walls she found herself calling facilities every couple of weeks to unclog her toilet. Butler pointed out that “when you combine a building that has old plumbing and water pressure issues with low-flow toilets, it’s going to cause problems.”

This is a simple equation that Penn Facilities seems to have forgotten. And two years later, the situation has not gotten much better, if my toilet is any indication.

Similarly, the Undergraduate Assembly has been investigating the implementation of Oxygenic showerheads, which reduce the amount of water used to 1.5 gallons per minute (U.S. Government mandates all showerheads must use no more than 2.5 gallons per minute). The new showerheads use less water and maintain water pressure by forcing air through the nozzle. Last time I checked, blowing air is not an effective way to get clean. In fact, many residents are finding themselves taking longer showers.

College junior Emerson Brooking, a former Daily Pennsylvanian columnist and member of the UA Housing, Facilities and Sustainability Committee, described the low-yield showerheads as “a perfect example of a green initiative gone too far … they conserve well beyond the suggested water flow, which is great for the environment, but terrible for anyone that actually tries to use them.”

But how eco-friendly is a toilet that you have to flush constantly, or a showerhead that takes twice as long to get you clean?

As head of the UA Housing, Facilities and Sustainability Committee and Engineering senior Daniel Sanchez explained, “The larger issue here, of course, is whether or not we need to sacrifice standard of living to meet environmental constraints. In my view, we do not.”

I’d like to take Sanchez’s philosophy a step further. When the University introduces green technologies that don’t function as well as their non-green counterparts, they are not only hurting students; they are also doing a disservice to the sustainability movement.

The term sustainability implies a sense of self-perpetuation. A toilet that clogs biweekly hardly fits into that category. Rather, the green movement should be about developing systems that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

If this movement is going to persist, it needs to present solutions that we can live with. Students’ first experiences with green technology should not be negative. They should not get the impression that “green” means lesser and that a sustainable existence equates to a life of sacrifice and inconvenience. Ashley Takacs is a College senior from Buffalo, N.Y. Her e-mail address is takacs@dailypennsylvanian.com. Ash Wednesday appears on alternate Wednesdays.

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