The Japanese are known for high-tech toilet engineering. Now, the toilet that talks to you:

This video shows how you can connect a simple device to the water inlet in your toilet tank to save two-thirds of a gallon per flush. For a family of four, the water savings could be as much as 4,000 gallons per year.

Think of how much money (and water) you could save if you used the gray water from your sink to flush the toilet. The Cisternlink Aquasaver people claim that you’ll save a swimming pool’s worth of water per year. Check it out!

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement in India, is the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.

From the Stockholm International Water Institute:

As the founder of the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Dr. Pathak is known around the world for his wide ranging work in the sanitation field to improve public health, advance social progress, and improve human rights in India and other countries. His accomplishments span the fields of sanitation technology, social enterprise, and healthcare education for millions of people in his native country, serving as a model for NGO agencies and public health initiatives around the world.

Since he established the Sulabh Sanitation Movement in 1970, Dr. Pathak has worked to change social attitudes toward traditional unsanitary latrine practices in slums, rural villages, and dense urban districts, and developed cost effective toilet systems that have improved daily life and health for millions of people. He has also waged an ongoing campaign to abolish the traditional practice of manual “scavenging” of human waste from bucket latrines in India while championing the rights of former scavengers and their families to economic opportunity, decent standards of living, and social dignity.

“The results of Dr. Pathak’s endeavors constitute one of the most amazing examples of how one person can impact the well being of millions,” noted the Stockholm Water Prize nominating committee in its citation. “Dr. Pathak’s leadership in attaining these remarkable socio-environmental results has been universally recognised, and not least by those who have secured the freedom of human dignity as a consequence of his efforts.”

Read more about this remarkable man . . . .