Green Design: Bathrooms

Click on the images above to learn about the green design features of 14 Maple Avenue.

 

In your own home, there are a number of ways to make your bathroom greener by taking advantage of some low-cost upgrades, such as low-flow showerheads and efficient lighting. When renovating, you might consider choosing a water efficient toilet and recycled products for your flooring (e.g. recycled glass tiles) and countertops.

How green are the bathrooms at the Dodge Foundation?
The first thing you might notice is our water efficient lavatories and our waterless urinal. Low-flush toilets provide thousands of gallons of water savings annually. With our toilets, you push the handle down to produce a smaller flush, and pull the handle up for a bigger flush.

The waterless urinal in the men’s room uses essentially the same design as a regular urinal, except that the urine passes through a specially-designed sealing oil cartridge that helps trap odor while allowing the urine to pass through and collect in a waste pipe below. As with low-flush toilets, waterless urinals provide thousands of gallons of water savings annually.

Additionally, you will find automatic lights that turn on when you enter the bathroom and turn off shortly after you leave, as well as automatic faucets.

The countertops and backsplashes are IceStone, which is made from 100% recycled glass that is mixed with cement. IceStone incorporates high recycled content, VOC-free ingredients, and has achieved a Cradle to Cradle™ Gold certification, which means that as a product, it is designed to be re-used again and again, and it is manufactured using as few resources as possible.

The floors are also recycled; the manufacturer uses its in-house scraps to make the tiles, so that the end product uses at least 40% recycled content.

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