Sometimes, conserving is not a good idea...

(Tim, w/thanks to Joseph) When building our house, we asked our daghter, Heather, what toilets to buy? (One of the principle privileges of being a member of the Bayly clan is being free to ask Heather anyhing you need to know.) Anyhow, in our old bathroom we'd had an Eljer bought because it had been top-rated by Consumer Reports. But it was entirely incompetent, so you see, the choice of toilets was quite important.

Heather said the only toilet to buy was a Toto, so I went on the internet just to double-check her wisdom and, sure enough, toilet forums were unanimous--Totos were IT! And they are. We bought all Totos and they were even cheap. As far as I know, they're the only brand of toilet that's been able to do the job well even while being oppressed by the federal government.

You do know why your toilet has to have a plunger nearby, don't you? And why it has to be flushed two or three times...

when you shake out the diaper? You do know in the old days before the environmentalists got control of the federal government, toilets only had to be flushed once, right?

If not, here's a good read. But first, a teaser...

The environmentalists didn't account for the present reality in which people typically flush twice, three times, or even four times during a single toilet event. Whether or not this ends up using more or less in the long run is entirely an empirical question, but let us just suppose that the new microtanks do indeed save water. In the same way, letting people die of infections conserves antibiotics, not brushing teeth conserves toothpaste, and not using anesthesia during surgery conserves needles and syringes.

Here is the truth that environmentalists do not face: Sometimes conserving is not a good idea. There are some life activities that cry out for the expenditure of resources, even in the most generous possible way. I would count waste disposal as one of those.