Caroma Sydney Smart Dual Flush Toilet

Australia - known for its shrimp, its beer, its beautiful beaches and its dual flush toilets.

OK, maybe not so famous for the dual flush toilets, but it should be!

Bathroom products manufacturer Caroma has been making dual flush toilets Down Under for 25 years. Put delicately, dual flush toilets use a little bit of water to wash away liquid waste and a more robust flush to cleanse the bowl of solid matter.

A number of Caroma toilets have made in stateside. In fact, Caroma claims to have the most EPA WaterSense approvals (36!) of any brand doing business in North America.

All of these WaterSense Caroma toilets are dual flush, high-efficiency toilets (HETs), meaning they use 20% less water than the currently mandated federal maximum of 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf).

But we're most excited about the dual flush Sydney Smart model. Caroma claims that the Sydney Smart offers "the lowest water consumption of any toilet now available in North America."

The little flush button on the Sydney Smart uses just 0.8 gallons of water, while the major flush lever swooshes 1.28 gallons around the bowl. Caroma says that these levels set "a new benchmark for water conservation in North America."

(If you needed any proof that North America needs water conservation, just check out these recent news stories from North Carolina, California, Georgia and even Hawaii.)

Where prior attempts to mandate water saving toilets resulted in reduced flush power, all WaterSense certified toilets are judged not just on water savings, but also on flushing performance. (If you have to flush a toilet multiple times to get rid of waste, you pretty much negate any per-flush water savings.)

Caroma says that the Sydney Smart's large trapway is virtually unblockable (please don't take that as a challenge), so one flush should be all you need.

Caroma estimates that the Sydney Smart can save a household more than between 18,000 and 30,000 gallons of water per year (depending on whether you're replacing a 3.5 gpf toilet or a pre-1980 toilet that may use as much as 5-7 gpf).
Some Green choices require us to make big lifestyle changes. The Sydney Smart gives us a chance to save thousands and thousands of gallons of water per year at the push of a button.

I'm not saying you should rip out your old toilet this minute and put in a Sydney Smart (though if you have an antique water-guzzling toilet, it might make eco-sense), but if you're building a new home or planning a bathroom rehab, the Sydney Smart seems like a very intelligent Green choice.

UPDATE (6/30) - On July 1, Caroma will release its newest high efficiency dual flush toilet, the Sydney Low Profile. Designed for bathrooms where space is at a premium and available in six bowl configurations, this HED uses 1.6 / 0.8 gpf, offering expected annual water savings of up to 18,000 gallons of water per year for a family of four switching from a single flush toilet. Two configurations of the Sydney Low Profile have already received approval from the EPA's WaterSense program. 

Where to buy:

Find distributors around North America through the "Where to Buy" page on Caroma's website. Designed for easy installation, the Sydney Smart has a MSRP of approximately $319.