Sounds good, but isn't. Look at it this way: We use about 165 gallons per person per day. Say a family of four, using 660 gal per day, which is 5500 lbs of water per day. (A gallon weighs about eight-and-a-third pounds.)

Suppose we could get all the energy out of the water. The energy is basically contained in the pressure, which is 40 to 60 psi. Say 50 psi. This is 116 feet of "hydraulic head."

The power is computed as feet of head times mass flow of water. I.e. It's like lifting 5500 lbs/d 116 feet, which uses 636,000 ft-lbs/day. Since there are 86,400 seconds in a day, this is 7.36 ft-lb/sec.

Now one horsepower is 550 ft-lbs/sec, so we have 7.36/550 = 0.013 hp. There are about 750 Watts in a horsepower, which makes this 10 Watts. In other words, all the power in the water a family of four uses amounts to the requirement of about five Christmas tree light bulbs. At $0.13 per kW-hr, this would save you $1.14 per YEAR. How long would it take to recoup the cost of this unit?

Plus, the turbine produces that energy at the expense of water pressure, so there wouldn’t be much pressure left for your shower or faucets, etc. The water company spends all that money on energy to pressurize your water for a reason.

The days of the flush and forget toilets are coming to an end as the be all and end all of sanitary aspirations, at least in places where water stress is a factor.

Let me be plain. Defecating or urinating into drinking water should be a crime. It's not recycling. On a very basic level it's taking nature's resources, turning it into toxic waste then flushing it into our watercourses and seas.

Future generations will think us barbaric for not composting our wastes so that our soils will be enriched. They will think us moronic for using chlorine to try and address the inevitable problems of defecating into drinking water.