I'd seen more and more of these waterless, zero flush urinals installed nowadays in Singapore. The urinals are chemically treated and does not need water to flush for every use.
Come to think of it, it's amazing how much water we use to flush the urinals for every use. I believe for every 200-300ml of urine, a litre of clean water is needed to clean the urinal. Multiply this amount by the usage pattern of each urinal, we actually waste a lot of clean water just to flush our pee from the urinal into public sewage.
However, these zero water flushing systems require chemical treatment and my guess is that there are some costs involved in the regular chemical treatment. Not too sure of the costs of the treatment will outweigh the cost of the water used by the conventional flushing.
In any case, this trend is only beginning and no one knows if in the long run, the zero flush system will really prove to eliminate stain and smell and maintain the same level of hygiene. We shall see.
One of the systems I saw in Singapore is of this particular brand
http://www.zeroflush.com.au/Today is 2th September 2009
Time now is 15:12 hrs
If it's environmentally friendly and saves costs and still maintain the same standard of hygiene.. why not?
