Eye Opener: Photo Essay

My photo essay is pretty straight-forward and simple. It is just on how environmentally efficient the University of Minnesota Duluth is when it comes to the bathrooms. I walked around taking pictures with my cell phone on things that stood out to me.

This hand dryer located in the new civil engineering women bathroom is a dyson airblade handdryer which uses only 540 watts and three of these can be connected on one line. It is fast, easy, and cuts down on time drying hands.

On the other hand, there are still more bathrooms on this campus that have more paper towel dispensers instead of energy efficient handdryers such as the dyson airblade. This method kills trees and less sanitary than an automatic handdryer. You wash your hands, turn off the water, then TOUCH the push button for the paper towel to come out of the dispenser, and then dry your hands. To me it's disgusting touching the wet push button after somebody else touched it. I'd rather see more dyson airblades installed than see these around the school.

Speaking of turning off the water, some sinks still have the double or single handle for turning on the water. This women bathroom in the civil engineering building has sinks that are timed and rationed for water. Extremely efficient and saves on water.

I gotta say that this is one of my favorite things at UMD. Water-Saving Dual-Function Handle toilets. This particular one is in the women bathroom in the civil engineering building, however I know there is another bathroom at the other end of campus at the planetarium lower level. Flush up for liquid waste. Flush down for solid waste. So easy, so simple, so cool.

This is an older women bathroom located underneath the library. I wasn't sure if it was built before 1994, but let's assume it is. Most toilets before that year flush 3.5 gallons of water with each use. Let's say it gets flushed 4 times a day--that's 14 gallons already in ONE day! Times 365 it makes it 5,110 gallons in a year; and yet, we all know that these bathrooms are flushed more than 4 times a day since we have over 11,000 students using the facilities every single day.

Moving on, I really like how some bathrooms have light switches. This bathroom is a unisex located in A.B. Anderson Hall first level. The light doesn't have to be on 24/7 if nobody is using it. I walked around campus looking for light switches in bathrooms that had more than one stall but there weren't many. At work, there are two stalls in the bathroom but the light only turns on when somebody walks in. It has a motion sensor connected to it enables the light to turn in when somebody walks in. I think that even the bathrooms that have a higher traffic rate should have light switches or motion sensors to save on using light energy.

In conclusion, UMD is slowly rolling to having more energy efficient bathrooms but there is plenty of room for improvement for the older bathrooms. Can't wait to see more of the dual-function handle toilets. Those just crack me up! :D