All was fine until Montreal...

Montreal has 13L flush toilets from the 1990s everywhere I've been so far (even at the McGill Faculty Club, which is a building that oozes wealth)! It's incredibly disheartening.

I've been staying at a friend's house since Thursday, for two very interesting conferences, one called Canadian Water: Towards a New Strategy on policy (which had all the foremost water experts in Canada in one room, pretty cool!) and one called Uncharted Waters, organized by students about ways to take action on water issues.

Anyway, so my friend and I had the "let it mellow" conversation (along the lines of "is that okay with you? Do you ever do that?") and both he and his roommate are both super eco-minded and easy going and they were like 'psh, of course, yeah no worries'. It wasn't even an issue, I was just shy because letting it mellow isn't really a socially acceptable/mainstream practice (yet).

We didn't have this conversation until day 2 though, and day 1, I flushed twice --IMMEDIATELY using 26 L of water!! Isn't that sad? After this whole month of being so water conscious and conserving and measuring, I actually felt a knot in my stomach before I pulled the "tire à chasse" (that is how you say 'flush handle' in French; it sounds nicer), and at the second conference, there were auto-flush toilets (which I hate). I know that might seem silly, because I'm still water conscious and doing everything I can, and it's not my fault...

This brings me to a pretty huge issue that I've been meaning to discuss on here. Part of conserving water is our daily habits, but at a certain point, a lot of it is structural. (Derrick Jensen illustrates this point very well in this article). If Montreal would get on the ball and do a toilet rebate program like Ottawa or Winnipeg, they could get dual flush toilets (see above picture) this wouldn't be an issue!

On this note, there is something you can do in your community to help. Join or start the ActionH2O campaign where you are. It sounds daunting, but it really doesn't need to be. Just find out what your municipality is doing, water-wise, and then make a few phone calls, and ask for a meeting with the city/community water manager. Get s/he to sign onto the ActionH2O Water Sustainability Charter (which officially acknowledges that we need to conserve water now to meet the demands of future generations) and explain that this not only saves water, but also saves energy, and money. Most municipalities are game, but of course we have a campaign plan for different scenarios. The ActionH2O Activist Toolkit is basically a step-by-step guide, and if you want more help, you can always email or call me! :)

If people only knew how much money and energy we could save by conserving water, we wouldn't waste as much as we do, and it would take some of the pressure off of looking for new sources of energy (like damming up the last remaining wild river in Quebec, the Romaine).