Eco-friendly plumbing and sewer: does it exist? The industry isn’t known for contributing to the environment, but there are opportunities in the industry that offer higher sustainability in communities.
What many people don’t know is that plumbing work can account for 17% of energy consumption in homes in the United States. Water is also used, and eco-friendly plumbing can limit wasted water.
How are plumbing businesses going green?
Energy-Efficient Equipment
Energy-efficient equipment helps to keep the industry eco-friendly. This means using tools and equipment that uses less:
- Energy
- Natural resources
Low-emission tools can be used to reduce a company’s carbon footprint. Vehicles that offer better gas mileage are also being used to keep costs down and limit the company’s environmental impact.
Reusing Materials and Recycling
Contractors can produce a lot of waste. Sewer line replacements include a lot of materials that can be recycled but are often discarded. The metal piping in laterals can often be reused through smelting or other means.
Teams can be dispatched to assess the worksite and help management better understand what materials can be reused.
Techniques can also be employed that reduce waste or the impact of having to replace a sewer pipe. Trenchless sewer repair techniques can reduce this waste.
“With SPT’s Pull-In-Place trenchless sewer pipe lining system, you no longer have to be concerned with destroying your property or yard. Even when it comes to your internal pipe system, tearing up floors and removing floors are a thing of the past,” SPT Pipe.
“Pipe Fusing” techniques are also being used that recycle old piping and materials to turn the material into adjustments for pipes and systems.
The goal is to reduce waste. This can mean reducing the amount of pipe and material waste or reducing the amount of flooring or additional repair waste, such as ripping up a road to replace a sewer pipe rather than performing a trenchless repair.
Encouraging Customers to Make Energy-Efficient Choices
Plumbers can try and sway the decisions of their customers so that they make eco-friendly choices. What does this mean? This means encouraging customers to:
- Choose efficient toilets. The toilets that customers choose makes a huge difference in the amount of water that they use. An inefficient model will use 3.5 gallons of water every flush, but plumbers can recommend efficient toilets that use just 1.6 gallons of water with each flush.
- Low-flow showerheads. Showerheads also come in low-flow models, and these models reduce water usage by 70%. When 20% of indoor water usage comes from showerheads, it makes sense to recommend low-flow showerheads as a means of lowering your customer’s overall water usage.
- Lower water pressure. If a home has high water pressure, you can encourage your clients to reduce their home’s water pressure. This has the potential to save hundreds of gallons of water per month. High pressure can also lead to problems with a client’s plumbing system, causing unnecessary repairs in the future.
If plumbers and their customers take an eco-friendly approach, they can reduce excess waste, electricity usage and water waste.
