Drop-A-Brick: California Startup Promises to Help Save Water During Drought


SAN FRANCISCO — California’s historic and record-breaking drought has given way to many inventive ideas and attempts at water preservation, including showering with friends

Now, one San Francisco-based startup is playing up an old technique involving a toilet and a brick and urging Californians all over the water-deficient Golden State to Drop-A-Brick in order to save water.

“Californians coming together to help California by dropping a brick,” said Ian Montgomery, one of the founders of the Drop-A-Brick startup, in an interview with Breitbart News. 

A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Montgomery, Gregory Hadden, and Dimitry Dragalev, who are behind the Drop-A-Brick startup, launched a campaign via Indiegogo this week.

For just $15, Californians can save themselves, and their beleaguered state, a nice amount of water and shed a few dollars off of their own water bills in the interim. The campaign says that just “one Drop-A-Brick can save a household 2 gallons a day per person. For a family of four, that’s 50 extra gallons a week that can be used for bathing, doing laundry, and flushing the toilet.” 

The campaign is urging individuals to purchase Drop-A-Brick for friends, relatives, or anyone they believe could benefit from implementing this toilet bowl-friendly technique.

The brick itself is made of an eco-friendly material with a bit of natural dye and filled with an all-natural hydro gel powder, which Montgomery says, “You could actually eat it if you wanted to,” although he does not recommend it. The instructions for its use are as easy as 1, 2, 3: 

Drop-A-Brick displaces water in your toilet’s tank, saving about half a gallon every time you flush. Just remove the lid on the tank, wedge Drop-A-Brick vertically into the tank (or which ever way fits best) and then replace the lid. Voila! You’re a conservationist. 

“We decided to do this not as a make money venture but as a help the world venture,” Montgomery said. Drop-A-Brick could save approximately 67 million gallons of water every day if every Californian were to use it. 

Unlike actual bricks, which can break down in the toilet bowl and cause damage to pipes, Drop-A-Brick is “made of high quality materials that will last for years and won’t leech toxins back into the water system.”

A native Australian, Montgomery said he came up with the idea, along with his fellow investors, when he noticed several people in Northern California hosing their driveways down in the middle of the drought. 

“I just thought, they don’t get it do they?” which reminded him of his youth in Australia, a region that is well-versed in water conservation. Australia is considered to be the earth’s driest inhabited continent and has several strict water restriction policies in place as a result. One of those rules prohibits the public from washing their cars unless they are doing so at a location that uses recycled water.

Back in Australia, Montgomery’s family used to drop actual bricks into the toilet tank to increase the water level and subsequently decrease the amount of water released with each flush. That prompted the group to develop the brick idea into a more toilet bowl-friendly material.

Individuals interested in dropping a brick, can do so by clicking here.