Falcon Waterfree Urinals CA Shut The Flush Up Water Conservation Rebates

Falcon Waterfree Urinals CA Shut The Flush Up Water Conservation Rebates

Falcon Water Technologies sponsored PGA Tour golf professional Jason Gore to evangelize water savings rebate programs implemented by local utilities throughout California in order to help overcome the possibility that the state has one year of stored H20 left after four years of drought. The Sports Techie community blog spoke to Gore about his social media efforts to spread awareness about this global epidemic that has led to unprecedented glacier melting in Greenland, the Article Circle and Antarctica, the largest land mass of ice on the planet resulting is ocean levels rising with the potential to displace millions of human and animals that live on the many coast lines around the world. The time is now for all golf courses to meet this dilemma head on with conservation efforts much like Scott Heyn, General Manager at Oakmont Country Club in Southern California has persuaded his private equity course members to initially fund. Steve Nuskiewicz, Falcon Senior VP North American Sales, also shared with us why the rebate program is in place and how their tech eliminates the need for flush or low flush urinals.

Falcon WaterFree Technologies
Falcon Waterfree Technologies, LLC promotes conservation of fresh water and supports sustainable resource management by providing the #waterfree urinal system. Golf course restrooms are the focus of their “CA Shut The Flush Up” campaign because by installing water-efficient or waterfree urinals, up to 40,000 gallons of water per year/per urinal is saved a year. In order to save 88,000,000 gallons of water a year, each one of the 1,100 golf courses in California would need to install two waterfree urinals in their bathrooms. Gore said, “Making the switch to waterfree urinals is a very small undertaking with unlimited savings potential.”

The Los Angeles and San Francisco water utilities are doing their part to conserve water by incentivizing golf courses with rebate programs designed to pay for the total purchase and installation price of the waterless urinal. Los Angeles Department of Water & Power has a $20 million rebate program that allows L.A. area golf courses to subsidize out of pocket costs on the $500 fixture purchase and installation in most cases. An added bonus is there are no limits on redeemable rebates per location. Installation takes a mere one hour in many cases.

“Golf courses get a bad reputation, sometimes deservedly so, when it comes to water usage and while they’ve come a long way in the last 10 years, there are still important steps for them to take to finish the job,” emphasized Gore.

Riviera Country Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Hillcrest Country Club and Bel-Air Country Club are already saving money on water bills and cutting back on usage due to Falcon Waterfree urinals installed in their clubhouses, locker rooms, restaurants and pool areas.

Jason Gore
Gore is a CA native that lives in Valencia. He has known Tiger Woods since he was 11. Jason graduated from Pepperdine where he helped lead the Waves to the NCAA Championship in 1997. Before transferring there, he won the Pac-10 individual championship as a freshman and sophomore at the University of Arizona. Besides holding the record for most wins in Web.com Tour history, Gore once shot an impressive 59 on the PGA Tour.

“As a global company with California roots, we jumped at the chance to work with Jason to help raise awareness for our efforts,” said Falcon Waterfree CEO Simon Davis. “We are always looking at new, fun ways to reach important market segments and Jason will help to ensure we get our message out there. We look forward to a long relationship and we are convinced he will win on the course and we will win off the course.”

Jason wears the Falcon logo on his polo shirt sleeve during tournaments and after play. The business relationship began at Valencia CC because Davis and Gore are fellow members. PGA golfers have asked him about the logo and placement. Gore mentioned that Rory McIIroy and Phil Mickelson both liked it. Gore’s caddy loves the sponsorship and thinks it is great. His social media content was met by PGA Tour characters with jokes such as, “that’s why we use trees,” but some have retweeted his noble efforts.

Many cities have rebate programs in place to cover the entire cost of installing a waterfree urinal from @CA_STFlushUp

— Jason Gore (@JasonGore59) February 23, 2015

Gore’s family plays a sport water game every month to help lower the bill, his two kids moved from baths to quick showers and compete to see who can take the fastest shower. They do not yet have a Waterfree in their present home but his friend just installed one in his playhouse in Arizona.

I like this campaign and am happy to help Jason spread the word to golf courses and resorts throughout California, the U.S and around the world. He believes the tech is innovative, extremely hygienic and odor free, and it saves both money and water making it an impactful sports tech product.

Shut The Flush Up
Steve Nuskiewicz spoke to me about the severe California drought and the need for more awareness which is why the Shut The Flush Up campaign was created. He is eager to watch the ROI Gore provides on social media via targeted marketing.

Waterfree technology developed by Falcon is the marketplace leader and more advanced than any other urinal. They constantly bring new concepts to market and are innovators in the janitorial and maintenance space saving hundreds and thousands of gallons of water for customers and the environment. The cartridges take three minutes to change, either you do it or sign up for the Falcon maintenance program. Day to day operation is simple, spray and wipe down the urinal, no engineering staff is needed for installation.

The rebate program in Southern California has been around since 2002/2003. The first facility to install Waterfree was the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The initial 300 urinals will be added to the extras recent stadium renovations called for. Staples Center installed Waterfree back in 2007 and saves millions of gallons of water spread across their 330 events a year.

Phillips Arena here in Atlanta is not a present client. Throughout Georgia, some school districts and office spaces are using Waterfree but not The Masters at Augusta National. Even though water rates are not as high here or in other states compared to CA, sewage rates and waste water elimination is.

They offer a “Greener Restroom” for facilities that comes with waterless urinals, high efficiency toilets and solar powered faucets. The Sloan Valve Company produces the solar facets that actually are a Falcon private label relationship for Sloan water free, solar facets, sinks and flush valves.

I learned a new term from him, Zeroscape. It basically means a desert like ecosystem that requires no water, something golf courses and resorts around the globe are beginning to embrace.

Oakmont Country Club
Oakmont C.C. was founded in 1922. The 42,000 square foot clubhouse and immaculate facilities include a driving range, men’s and women’s locker rooms, card rooms, a professionally equipped exercise room and pool. Golf is played 12 months a year by the active, equity club membership, all year round. Cell phones are not allowed during play or in the buildings but text messaging is now fine. The property now has 15 Falcon Waterfree urinals on property saving 750,000 gallon a year, according to GM Scott Heyn, and the rebates are a large reason it was done.

Heyn says that corporate PGA, the Golf Course Superintends Association of America (GCSAA) 19,000 members in more than 72 countries and the National Golf Course Owners Associations (NGCOA) 5,300 members on behalf of over 7,200 golf courses, has a combined aim to be water efficient and stay ahead of the curve.

He discussed a culture change at Oakmont CC with the goal of saving water as a win-win for members and the region. The Oakmont goal is to have less grass to water. There was resistance in the beginning changing the traditional grass land park to a CA native style, desert golf course. Without constant watering, the course is actually more a desert than not. Some people simply did not like the style but most members understand the need and long term sustainability priorities. The result, Hayn said, “Is a visually stunning and beautiful, enhanced ranking, course that added new elements, colors and plants.”

Heyn believes every course and the state of CA is looking at all or some of what they have accomplished for water usage conservation. He feels that courses not prepared will be in trouble. Oakmont depended on rebate programs. The Metropolitan water district $2.4 million rebate they received for their irrigation system is being looking at it by other courses as a model.

Their reduction project involved 26 acres of irrigated turf that transformed the course back to original CA landscape. They have a new high tech irrigation system that saves money by ensuring the proper amount of water is used. Drip irrigated technology means no overhead watering takes place dropping water usage by 20-25 percent.

Oakmont water conservation consists of using recycled water for irrigation, limiting watering hours and retrofitting restroom fixtures with Waterfree Urinals. These are a few of the sustainable initiatives being implemented as part of their water conservation strategy, yet the conversation is ongoing.

Last thing I wanted to know was his perspective on private vs. public courses and how they differ on water issues. Heyn’s prior job at Kemper Sports allowed him to work with public city courses. Heyn assures me they are adamant about changing out urinals and implementing efficient irrigation as are the local municipalities. Most of these courses are for profit so the money savings goes back to the owners.

Another factor is whether water comes from a private well or via public utilities. If a golf course has a private well, they may be slower to upgrade water systems because their restrictions and cost of usage is normally less than public water costs.

SoCal Water Restrictions
The drought has impacted everybody in SoCal. The cost of water is expensive and the current business model for golf courses is not working. Many counties and cities have turned off water in order to get ahead of this community problem. Even if this drought ends soon, there will be another one, they keep getting worse and worse and water levels are not refilling back to previous storage levels. Global warming is happening, there is no doubt about it says Vice.

Our Rising Oceans: VICE on HBO Debrief (Episode 1)

California Governor Brown and the water board just announced a $1 billion emergency relief package. Water restrictions are in place limiting outdoor lawn and landscape watering to two day per week which accounts for about half of all consumption in urban areas.

For 10,000 years, California had 10,000 residents and in 2015 that number has risen to 38 million, says Governor Brown, leaving about a year of water left for all people and pets to use as they presently do, according to the LA Times. This is indeed a non-partisan problem.

Sports Techie, with surface water at dangerously low levels and non-renewable groundwater being depleted at a rapid pace, this hydrological challenge is one all mankind needs to be proactive with. Recycling is only one way of helping the sustainability cause, another is to take advantage of rebate programs such as CA Shut The Flush Up by Falcon Waterfree Technologies.

I hope Gore retweets this blog so his PGA Tour partners can as well so that golf course owners, operators and board of directors everywhere can understand why they need to begin making immediate water changes for the good of us all.

See y’all later in Seattle and here in Atlanta.

Sports Techie Social Media Networks

Newest
Sports Techie SportsBlog.com: http://www.sportsblog.com/profile/SportsTechie
Sports Techie Skyword: http://robertroble.skyword.com/
Sports Techie Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user36773456
Sports Techie FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/sportstechienet

Established
Sports Techie Skype: sportstechie
Sports Techie Twitter: @SportsTechieNET:  http://twitter.com/SportsTechieNET
THE #SportsTechie Twitter: @THESportsTechie: https://twitter.com/THESportsTechie
Sports Techie Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/SportsTechie
Sports Techie YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sportstechie
Sports Techie Google+: http://gplus.to/SportsTechie Sports Techie Google+ Community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103708211458464405078
Sports Techie (Robert Roble) Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RobertRoble
Sports Techie LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Sports-Techie-2958439
Sports Techie LinkedIn (Robert Roble): https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertroble
Sports Techie Instagram: http://instagram.com/sportstechie
Sports Techie Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/SportsTechie/
Sports Techie Moby Picture: http://www.mobypicture.com/user/sportstechieNET
Sports Techie Myspace (Bob Roble): http://www.myspace.com/549000677
Sports Techie Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86791607@N04/
Sports Techie Vine: https://vine.co/u/906354614369136640
Sports Techie Quora: https://www.quora.com/Bob-Roble
AND
Sports Techie Guy: https://twitter.com/sportstechieguy