All I ask is just one flush..

For about the fifth time in the last month, the toilets at Graduate House aren't flushing. The stuff I deposited into my toilet (on four separate occasions) has been in the bowl for more than twelve hours now. It goes without saying that I've closed the lid and have left the fan on. Fortunately, my neighbour is either covering the WTO ministerial-level meetings in Wan Chai or he's already gone on his month-long internship in Bangalore. Either way, I'm glad he's not here to add to the mess.

Fortunately, I still have running water here. The cool thing about many buildings in Hong Kong is that the toilets flush with sea water. Assuming that the 7 million people in Hong Kong only go to the toilet 5 times a day and that toilets average 10 litres per flush, that's 350 million litres of freshwater per day that's NOT being used to flush waste. I have no clue what proportion of buildings in Hong Kong have such system, but I've been told that it's quite common.

I know for a fact that the toilets in my family's house in Canada flushes with fresh water rather than sea water. It's too bad that Canada's public utilities infrastructure is still so wasteful. But if all buildings in Canada are to be fitted with sea water-flushing toilets today, the costs would be tremendous. We already have separate pipes for fresh water and waste water - every town and city would then have to be connected by a whole new set of pipes. And I suppose this isn't practical for interior areas that are thousands of kilometres away from the oceans.


The issue of separate sea water pipes that are used exclusively for flushing toilets has made me think about scarcity and economies of scale in Hong Kong. Scarcity is particularly severe in Hong Kong. On the negative side, scarcity can make certain things pretty damned expensive, especially when compared to just across the border in Mainland China! But one good thing about scarcity is that it breeds ingenuity. Bureaucrats, urban planners, architects, and interior designers must come up with innovative solutions to tackle the problems of land scarcity, for example. That is one reason why there are so many tall buildings in Hong Kong, as well as why we use sea water to flush our toilets. Another good thing that can come with scarcity is that people are forced to become more efficient, but for the life of me, I can't come up with any damned examples right now.

Hong Kong's economies of scale allows buildings to be built higher, for buses and trains to run more frequently, and for other things that would be more expensive elsewhere to be built in Hong Kong. I love it that MTR rides can cost less than $1 CAD, and that trains run as frequently as every single minute! High ridership not only sustains this system, but ensures profitability!


On the other hand, there is no recycling in Hong Kong. And the toilets don't flush sometimes.