This Year's Winner: Don't Flush Good Water After Bad

"This has saved the outpatient center over $1,700 a year," she said. "Imagine if all hospitals and outpatient centers did this. I can only hope that perhaps through this contest and publicizing this idea that it would catch on and save our health-care system millions of dollars while saving our environment at the same time."

I hope so, too.

This brings me to the first-place winner of the 2007 Penny Pincher of the Year contest, who will receive $100 -- Tom Sponheim of Seattle.

Let's just say Sponheim literally got tired of seeing savings being flushed down the toilet. Sponheim won not because of penny pinching that saved him money but for thinking about a way to cut waste in his community.

Several years ago, when Seattle was going through a severe drought, Sponheim took it upon himself to visit restrooms in some of the older coffee shops in the area -- those likely to be equipped with outdated five-gallon toilets, as opposed to new water-saving models. Then he'd flush them to see if they really needed all the water they were using. If not, he adjusted the level of water in the tank so that each flush was a little less of a drain on the system.

"I tried to go to places with a lot of traffic," he said. "I created a spreadsheet with the estimated water savings for each restaurant, estimating the number of times a day the toilet would be flushed and number of ounces saved on each flush. My calculations showed that my three or four hours of work would result in a savings of about 500,000 liters a year of water."

Sponheim, who works on the Web site http://www.solarcookers.org, says his flushing inspections continue today.

While I wouldn't recommend this to the average coffee-shop customer, it does show, as Sponheim said, that "one person can make a difference."

Carter would be proud.

Thanks to all who entered this year. And in the spirit of this contest, the best of the nonwinning entries will not go to waste. Subscribe to my e-letter at http://www.washingtonpost.com, where I will post conservation tips from the leftover submissions.

• On the air: Michelle Singletary discusses personal finance Tuesdays on NPR's "Day to Day" program and online athttp://www.npr.org.She also has a new personal finance call-in show that airs Sundays on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 169 "The Power," at 8 to 10 p.m.

• By mail: Readers can write to her at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.

• By e-mail:singletarym@washpost.com.

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