Seattle Public Utilities and its Purveyor Partners (Water Conservation Partnership) had an urgent need for residents to conserve water during the summer of 2001. Unusually dry weather meant potential water shortages if residents didnt cut back. To do this, the Partnership asked PRR to create a program that would encourage residents to replace their old water-wasting toilets with low-flow models, with the end goal of distributing at least 2,000 toilets through the program.

Old three to seven gallons per flush toilets are the largest waster of water in most households. Current plumbing code requires that all new toilets sold only use 1.6 gallons or less per flush. The challenge was to get residents to replace old toilets in a way the Partnership could guarantee water was being saved. A simple in-store rebate program would have had substantial numbers of free-riderspeople who were replacing their toilets anyway, or using discounted toilets for new construction. The program needed to ensure that a water-wasting toilet was being removed for good. PRR recommended a program to rebate the bring-back of the old water-wasting toilet. Residents were asked to buy a new toilet, replace their old one, and bring it to one of two events to receive a $40 rebate. PRR promoted the program through a co-op advertising campaign with local retailers, in-store signage, radio promotions, TV and print advertising, direct mail, and a media event. The co-op ad program led to partnerships with retailers including Home Depot and McLendon Hardware, and garnered substantial advertising for the program. The well-attended media event invited journalists to come to a residents home and witness a flush-off competition where ping-pong balls were flushed through a water-wasting toilet and a new low-flow toilet into glass tanks. The balls demonstrated how well the new toilets cleared waste, and the tanks illustrated the dramatic difference in water use. More than 4,600 toilets were collected at the events, equaling an estimated water savings of 45 million gallons per year. 403,000 pounds of old toilets were crushed for recycling. Media relations efforts for the campaign garnered 16 TV, six print and four radio news stories. The turn-in event was nationally recognized as a trivia question in Hasbro's 20th Anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit.