ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Two local organizations have come together for a unique recycling opportunity using toilet bowls. They say the effort will ultimately help improve the quality of Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay Water runs a rebate program, offering people up to $100 to replace their older toilet with a new, more water-efficient model.

“There’s actually a lot of older toilets out there still that are from 1993 or earlier and they use 3.5 or more gallons per flush,” said Amelia Brown, a program manager with Tampa Bay Water.

But the old toilets end up in the landfill, which is something that did not sit right with Brown.

“So we were looking for some opportunities to recycle them,” she said.

That’s where the partnership with Tampa Bay Watch began, which is an organization that aims to improve the quality of the bay through efforts like living shorelines.

That includes oyster reef balls, which are installed to help prevent erosion and give oysters a new habitat. Each one is made up of marine-safe concrete, which Brown said sparked an idea.

“We asked them if we could add porcelain chips into it and they were excited to try the pilot,” she said.

So, several crushed up toilets were added to the concrete mix and prototypes of the porcelain-infused oyster reef balls were installed. One year later, the prototypes are covered in barnacle growth and are home to some juvenile oysters, meaning they work just as well as the regular oyster reed balls.

“You save water by replacing your old toilet and then you help clean the water in the bay,” Brown said. “Because that’s what the oysters do. They help remove impurities in the water.”

Brown said the organizations will now be able to move forward with production, once they have a large enough volume of toilets to crush from the apartment buildings, hotels and other businesses they’re working with.

Find more information on Tampa Bay Water’s toilet rebate program.