This tidbit appeared in the Capitol Morning Report today:
Today is the last day to take the "Waterless Urinals 101" class at the Cal/EPA building. The building
manager, Thomas Properties Group, has offered the class three times this week to prepare male staffers for urinals that not only don’t flush but have no water. The secret is a urine-trapping cartridge that replaces the drain of a traditional urinal. The urine flows through the cartridge and is sealed beneath a check valve made of the same material used for leg urinals for astronauts. Odors are also sealed beneath the valve. Urine then flows down through the building’s plumbing. (Plain urine, it seems, is no more corrosive than water and urine.) Actually, there have been a few waterless urinals at 1001 I St. since 2003, but only as part of a pilot project. Starting tomorrow, they’re to be installed all through the 25-story structure. Estimates are that they could save a million gallons of water annually and up to $10,000 a year in electricity for what used to be the cost of pumping water through the old urinals. Today’s class begins at 10 a.m. in the media briefing room.
How does a waterless urinal work? Read about that here.
