Empowering Homeowners to Reuse Stormwater and Reduce Potable Water Waste

Leadership Project Proposal – Storm2Toilet.co

— Executive Summary. —
Every year a person uses more than 34,000 liters of potable water to flush toilets. Yet, this ineffective water system has been polluting drinking water and increasing water scarcity for decades. There is, however, a way to improve this system. The utilization of stormwater to flush toilets will reduce water cost and scarcity, lower flooding risks, and increase property value. Storm2Toilet.co is a website where homeowners, municipalities, and real estate agents can estimate how much stormwater can be collected in a property every year. This free platform advises the user about the components and size of the stormwater treatment system required for water re-utilization. Storm2Toilet will help construction companies and local governments identify possible market opportunities for stormwater projects and provide an app in the future to track house water usage.
Collaborators. We envision collaborating with local government (e.g., Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Water Resources) to help reach out to homeowners to introduce the platform. We also plan to collaborate with online real estate agencies (e.g., Zillow.com, Realtor.com, etc) where Storm2Toilet.co would quantify the potential of their properties to reuse stormwater. Moreover, the Storm2Toilet platform will be introduced to the CEO of Epic Cleantec which is a startup that treats and reuse wastewater on-site. Possible collaboration could arise from this meeting as both ideas are similar.

— Your Role Well Defined. —
As the CEO of Storm2Toilet.co, my goal is to build the platform and create an outreach strategy to increase the number of users of the platform. This includes social media advertisement, fostering relationships with local government and real estate agencies, and reaching out to neighborhood leaders to invite them to use the platform. The long-term goal is to develop a database that can be used by government agencies and construction firms to identify potential sites where stormwater treatment systems can be implemented successfully.

— Goals and Measurable Objectives. —
The objective of this project is to create a free and easy platform for homeowners to unfold the potential of their property in collecting stormwater. Users of the website will provide data that will be retained in the website database. A measure of success is how extensive this database will become with time. By educating users on the potential of their properties in reutilizing water, we will reduce water scarcity in water-stressed areas.
The database will also provide Storm2Toilet with valuable knowledge of possible markets where construction companies can operate and build these stormwater re-utilization projects.
On this website, the user will enter (1) their house roof area (ft2) and (2) the annual precipitation in their city – two information easily found on Google Maps & Google Search. With such information, we will be able to present the user with three different web pages:
1. The first page will calculate how many gallons of stormwater can be collected per year based on roof coverage and the local climate precipitation
2. The second page will show how many gallons of drinking water would be saved if stormwater is used to flush toilets in that household, calculate the economic savings in their water bill for each household, and calculate the possible reduction of flooding risk in that neighborhood
3. The third webpage will present the size of the different components that the owner must buy to build their stormwater collection system