Waterless+Urinal+Proposal

February 25, 2009 Dear Dr. Knodell,

We are undergraduates in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources that are involved in the spring 2009 Greening Aiken Internship class, and we are working with Gary Hawley who is directing the Greening of Aiken Initiative. Our particular team is working towards changing the conventional urinals in the Aiken Center to a waterless system. Currently there are eight inefficient urinals that use approximately 75,000 gallons of potable water each year. If we outfit the existing urinals with the proposed waterless system, water usage would be reduced by 97%.

According to data that was gathered by another Greening of Aiken student project, each urinal in the Aiken building is flushed and average of 13 times per day. This produces 26 gallons of wastewater per urinal per day, totaling 75,000 gallons of wastewater per year. According to information, from the Burlington Water Department, water costs $0.0035 per gallon. That amounts to $262.00 worth of water per year to flush the urinals in the Aiken Center. The initial cost to install the waterless system in the eight urinals in the Aiken Center is $350.00. Thus the payback time for this system is under a year and four months.

The product that we are looking to install in the Aiken Center is the EcoWise disc. The EcoWise disc is a bacterial disc that rests in the basin of the urinal and prevents buildup and odor. The urinal’s flush mechanism will be removed and replaced with a keyed system. The maintenance staff will be trained by EcoWise to perform routine upkeep.

If the project works in the Aiken Center, this would provide evidence to promote waterless urinals campus wide, by improving water conservation for the university without replacing the existing urinals. If this project is funded we will provide a detailed report analyzing the progress made on the project. EcoWise will be in the Burlington area on March 4th and 5th, and is willing to install and train at that time.

We have been able to obtain half of the funding for this project from a greening grant that Dr. Alan McIntosh has secured. We would like to request that you fund the remaining $150 necessary to complete this project.

Thank you for your time and interest in our goals. If this project is fully funded we are prepared to install the waterless urinal systems into the Aiken Center as soon as the first week of March 2009. For our goals to be a success we would appreciate a conclusive decision about this funding request at your earliest convenience.

From your interested and excited undergraduates, Heather Bromberg Aaron Rice Kelsey McAuliff Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences hbromber@uvm.edu arice3@uvm.edu kmcaulif@uvm.edu