Aerators save Pitt water, money

Pitt still wants its students to stay clean, it just wants them to save water while doing… Pitt still wants its students to stay clean, it just wants them to save water while doing so.

In August, Pitt welcomed an eco-friendly change to Litchfield Towers’ bathrooms that cuts down not only on costs, but water usage, too. In conjunction with the Student Sustainable Projects Committee, Pitt’s Housing Department installed new aerators in every bathroom sink in the three Towers dorms, except the end sinks.

Aerators are little circular devices with holes in them that decrease the flow of water going through the sink faucets. The water that comes through appears broken up by air, hence the name.

Faucets in Towers’ sinks previously let out 2.2 gallons of water per minute, whereas the new ones only let out 0.5 gallons per minute.

Rachel Meyer, the Sustainability Coordinator for the Housing Department, said water usage will theoretically decrease by 77 percent because of the aerators.

Meyer compared last September’s water-use data in Towers with this September’s to get some idea of how well the devices are actually working. This data confirmed that water consumption decreased by approximately 950,000 gallons, or 20 percent of water usage, saving $14,000.

“It’s good to have, because now we have this data that says it’s decreasing our water use and it’s a really inexpensive thing,” Meyer said.

To prove consistent decrease, Meyer plans to compare October’s water consumption as well.

“This one small idea in Towers could [have] breadth across campus,” she said.

Patrick Heffley, the building superintendent for Litchfield Towers and Brackenridge Hall, said that even though he thinks students haven’t noticed anything about the new aerators, “I feel real good about it.”

While Heffley thinks that some students may not have noticed the change immediately, others said they see the new aerators on campus as a positive implementation.

For one student, the major pull to the new aerators comes from a personal benefit rather than an environmental one.

“I don’t care about the environment,” freshman and Towers resident Jason Kohlburn said. “It’s useful because it increases the water pressure. If there’s no water pressure, it doesn’t clean my toothbrush off properly.”

Freshman and Towers resident Daniel Goodstein, who was familiar with the aerators because he has them in his home, said that full force isn’t always needed for faucets.

“It’s not like you need enough force to blast the toothpaste off the brush,” he said.

This idea started with Rebecca Schroeder, the Environmental Committee chair for SGB. She said in an email that the inspiration for the creation of the Green Fund in 2010 came from her own ideas for green initiatives and the thought that other students would have some, too.

“Aerators were the simplest and cheapest idea I had, so that’s the one I went with for my project proposal to the Green Fund in their pilot run,” she said.

The change came as an initiative made by the Student Sustainable Projects Committee, a committee that reviews green initiatives and manages and pays for them through the Student Government Board’s Pitt Green Fund. The group works on the projects in conjunction with Pitt administration.

The Pitt Green Fund currently exists under the Student Government Board Environmental Committee and is allocated $2,500 a year from the Student Activities Fund to finance projects proposed by students that will make Pitt’s campus more sustainable, according to SGB Board member Emily Hoover.

Schroeder said the costs for these aerators are usually around $2 per aerator sink, but Pitt has special contracts with certain suppliers so the aerators were bought in bulk amounts for a price closer to $1 per aerator. Each Tower totaled about $125-$175.

She received approval from the committee and the new aerators found their way to a floor of Tower C for a two-month-long study early last summer focusing on signs of increased maintenance. When that proved false and the impact was found to be effective, the aerators spread to all of Towers.

Schroeder said that while there aren’t any concrete plans to extend the aerator project to other buildings, it is likely that more will be installed because the current installation seems to have saved a decent amount of water. When the new aerators will be installed and where they will be placed is still unknown.

She also said that she sees the project as a moral story.

“Without this body soliciting ideas from students to make our campus greener, it would be a lot more difficult to have seen this idea to fruition,” she said.