PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — If you have an old leaky toilet and plan to replace it, don't throw it away! Rebates through Tampa Bay Water are available, and you can help protect the environment.
A new pilot program through Tampa Bay Water and Tampa Bay Watch aims to turn old toilets into oyster reef balls. The 150 to 200-pound pieces of concrete are designed to protect the environment while giving oysters a place to attach and grow.
"You got to think about how many toilets are out there. Across all the businesses and all the homes, if there are two and a half million people in the Tampa Bay area, there's probably more than one potty per person," Amelia Brown, Demand Management Program Manager at Tampa Bay Water, said. "Conserving water has a few benefits. It's good for the environment because that means there's more water that you can leave in the rivers and the wetlands and the natural environment. It's good for homeowners and businesses because they can save money on water and wastewater bills. And it's good for the utilities because it's cheaper to conserve water than build new water supplies."
Using a sledgehammer, Brown helped smash two toilets. The porcelain chips were used instead of the other construction aggregate in the reef ball concrete mix. After nearly a year in the water outside Tampa Bay Watch's headquarters on Tierra Verde, scientists learned the porcelain chips worked just as well as the other rocks for oysters to attach to.
"The oysters barnacle, your fouling organisms will attach these reef balls and do that biological filtration, that's so important," Eric Plage, Oyster Reef Ball Program Coordinator at Tampa Bay Watch, said.
Plage said the benefits to the community and environment are immeasurable.
"They help to stabilize the shoreline fight, that erosion issue. We're having these natural shorelines; they're good for biological filtration because the oysters that attach them helped to filter the water, and they create those oyster communities," Plage said. "By creating that habitat for the oysters and those oyster communities, all the fish that brings habitat to your wading birds are everything out here in the Bay."
All volunteer teams construct the reef balls. If you would like to help out Tampa Bay Watch,click here.
"All the trash that's going to the counties gets burned up. And so it's a waste-to-energy process. But the porcelain doesn't burn. So that is sitting in a landfill," Brown said. "We've identified a commercial crusher interested in taking the toilets. And since I managed the rebate programs, some apartment complexes and hotels are looking at replacing their old toilets. So we offer this option to them to have their toilets crushed and recycled. And so hopefully, if they take advantage of that, we can start building our toilet recycling program."
To qualify for the rebates, Tampa Bay Water says you must replace older high-volume toilets with WaterSense-certified models that use 1.28 GPF or less.
Information on the rebates can be found here.
