Aussie Surprise of the Month
Charles Rothauser - flushed with success

A traditional Australian way of saving water in a drought is to drop a house brick into the cistern to reduce the volume of water in it.

But, in 1980, In 1956 Charles Rothauser, a Hungarian immigrant, renamed his plastics company "Caroma" and began manufacturing bathroom products, including the world's first one-piece plastic toilet cistern (the cistern is the water tank above the toilet that stores the flush).

Then, with $130,000 government assistance, Bruce Thompson of Caroma developed a cistern with two buttons and flush volumes (11.0 litres and 5.5 litres). The toilet was redesigned to make sure less water could still remove all waste.

Thompson's Duoset cistern saved 32,000 litres of water a year per household when it was trialed in a small South Australian town. Caroma's success led to legislation in every state but NSW to make dual volume toilets compulsory in new buildings. The product is now shipped to more than 30 countries worldwide.