Helping Families Conserve Water
McGuinty Government Proposes Mandating Water-Saving Toilets
Ontario is proposing to require that all toilets sold in the province use no more than six litres of water per flush.
The proposed measure would promote conservation and lower household bills for Ontario families.
Toilet flushing accounts for 30 per cent of in-home water use. Replacing a 13 litre per flush toilet with a more efficient six litre or less model saves an average household about 35,000 litres of water a year.
Mandating water-saving toilets would support the Water Opportunities Act, which is part of the new Open Ontario plan. This act, to be introduced later this year, would lay the foundation for new Ontario jobs and make the province the North American leader in the development and sale of new technologies and services for water conservation and treatment.
QUICK FACTS
- The government expects to introduce a regulation under the Green Energy Act to implement the new requirements.
- Ontarians currently use about 260 litres of water per capita per day, nearly twice as much as other countries with similar standards of living such as Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
- Pumping and distributing water to homes and businesses and treating water and wastewater makes up one-third to one-half of a city’s total electrical use – double that of street lighting.
- The Building Code recently eliminated exemptions allowing installation of toilets using more than six litres per flush in renovations.
