News: Before You Flush
Posted by Matthew Justice on Nov 25, 2007
This is an interesting article from 2006 that talks about the environmental impact of using the restroom onboard commercial airlines. China Southern airline raised the question when it gently requested that passengers use the restroom prior to boarding.
According to Captain Liu Zhiyuan: “The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10 kilometers.” The motivation behind the airline's restroom request is for economical reasons. According to the report, China's airlines flushed 3 billion ($405,443,758 USD) Yuan away in the first half of the year due to rising fuel costs.
Consider that a transatlantic flight for a family of four already creates more CO2 than that family would generate at home in an entire year, and that burning airplane fuel has a global warming effect 2.7 times your typical ground-based release of CO2, this can really have a big impact. While the vacuum toilets used on airplanes are already pretty water-efficient, based on China Southern's figures (1 liter of fuel/flush) and the altitude effect, the CO2 released by these toilets per flush is about 14.27 pounds.
Source Non-Mobile: http://www.treehugger.com/files/...
2nd Source Non-Mobile: http://english.people.com.cn/200611/...
Tags: Airlines, Airplanes, Flying, Green
Technorati Tags: Airlines, Airplanes, Flying, Green