Flushing toilets have been in homes since the middle of the 1800s but the design did not change much for their first century of existence. In the 1990s everyone in the country started to be more concerned with the environment and the amount of water that they were using on a daily basis. Seven gallons began to seem like a lot to literally go down the drain with each flush. This is when the first "low-flow" toilet came into existence.
The earlier models of this design were a success in their concept, as they used a mere 1.6 gallons of water per flush. But, the manufacturers failed to alter the design in a way where they would still dispense of all of the waste as effectively as before. Because of this everyone from people doing bathroom renovations to real estate agents started longing for the old models and some people would even go looking for older used toilets rather than their newer counterparts in stores.
Throughout the last decade there have been many different variations of toilet designs that all seek to use the least amount of water possible while still being as effective as customers have come to expect. Now, about one third of the units that you will find in homes for sale, to properties in Paris come from a Japanese company named Toto. They have made the most progress when it comes to building the ideal design.
The original design of toilets mostly used gravity to propel everything down the drain. This was fine as long as you were using lots of water. When the amount of water was reduced designers needed to come up with another method to get the same results. There are now all sorts of different models to choose from for your home or even to use in large office buildings that need to worry more about their energy consumption and water bills. In Australia, which is the driest continent in the world, there are even models that have two different flush settings. The first uses the now standard 1.6 gallons of water for solid waste and the second uses half as much at .8 gallons and is for liquid only. This could soon become standard for countries throughout the rest of the world.
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