A while back I wrote about water conservation, something I maintain a passive awareness of the importance of, having been raised in the desert Southwest most of my life, and currently residing in part of the Southwest that struggles with the reality of drought conditions.  My post had to do with throttling the default pressure of water coming out of a faucet, so that it wasn't, almost automatically, coming on at full tilt.

Another good solution to conserving water is finding a better use for what they call  grey water - the water that we use to wash our hands (and some would also include water drained from the wash cycle of a washing machine, though this is kind of a different category, I think).  Right now, you wash your hands, the water is running over your hands, down the sink and to the sewer.  Not very efficient.  Meanwhile, you refill your toilet bowl after every flush with clean water - the same stuff you drink out of your kitchen sink.  

Two cool technologies here that attempt to have our grey water serve another purpose before it ends up in the sewer:  filling the toilet tank each time you flush it.  

I'll put in a disclaimer that I have no relation to either of these companies or technologies, nor have I ever seen or implemented them in real life.  But they look really cool, and I know that I will be looking into one of these solutions - probably the first one (since we're just renting our home right now).

The first solution replaces the average toilet tank cover with a special one that includes a sink and a drain.  It hooks to the incoming water source inside the toilet bowl, and reroutes it to the sink.   The sink drains directly into the toilet tank.   When you're done with, um, your business, you flush the toilet.  The water the water in the tank flushes through the toilet, but the incoming replacement water to fill the tank runs through the sink automatically.  Wash your hands in the water coming out of the sink faucet (it's clean water!), and the grey water that results drains into the tank to refill the tank.  The sink shuts off when the tank is full.  On the plus side, you don't have to handle a faucet with dirty hands.  On the down side - no hot water, only cold.  Still, quite cool, relatively inexpensive, and at least a moderate improvement over just - literally - flushing good water down the drain.

The second solution is more complicated, and includes a reservoir for storing the gray water to refill the tank each time.  Seems like it would be more efficient use of water, but it requires a small electrical pump, so you're burning a small amount of electricity to save water.  An interesting solution, but as a renter, not something I'd be interested in trying to implement because it's more complex.  But still, very cool!