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Cities turn to ‘extreme’ water recycling
- cs702 3y agoThe full title of the OP is: "Beyond the Yuck Factor: Cities Turn to ‘Extreme’ Water Recycling" (emphasis mine). I can't help but think of "extreme-recycled" water as a socially acceptable version of Soylent Green, produced from liquid instead of solid waste.[a] More seriously, I think recycling waste-water is a great idea. If we, human beings, continue to change our natural environment as rapidly as in the recent past, many prominent climate models predict that traditional forms of food and water production will likely become untenable due to extreme weather events like heatwaves and fires. If those climate models are right, we'll have no choice but to resort to creative forms of recycling to provide everyone with enough food and water. --- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
- DarkNova6 3y agoI come from a country which specializes in water reprocessing, but doing so diligently is an expansive endeavour. Especially where private companies are doing this, the incentive is to keep costs low and just be above barely-legal (and maybe not even that). There is a myriad of drugs, pesticides and chemicals which are known to be inside the water system in the us. Your neighbour is depressed? Good for you. You might get some anti-depressants yourself (no, the body does not break down drugs completely, they are mostly escaping with the wastewater). But hey, maybe I am just paranoid. Good watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FccVv5NsIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FccVv5NsIY
- jorvi 3y agoCurrently almost all countries sell water earmarked for industrial use at absurdly reduced prices, when compared to consumer prices. Jack up the rate so both pay the same, and introduce a huge pollution / cleaning penalty for companies that don’t emit virtually fully (talking something like 99.999% here) cleaned wastewater. It’s slowly happening in Europe, but we’re decades to late with it. Even in The Netherlands and Belgium we’ve allowed companies to dump a continuous stream of PFAS-production polluted water straight into a river. Clown world :)
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt gets worse; Microsoft datacenters have been allowed to use up huge amounts of drinking water for cooling; it gets treated to avoid clogging up the lines, heated up, then just dumped back in the river. It's shameful and wasteful, and our country will run out of fresh water in my lifetime; I even heard one that says the aquifers will be running out within ten years. And they just used it for cooling. Likewise, there's heavy investments in offshore wind parks, but companies like Microsoft just come in (with government subsidies) and buy up the whole capacity. It was supposed to replace, not supplement, existing power generation options.
- chollida1 3y ago> It's shameful and wasteful, and our country will run out of fresh water in my lifetime; I even heard one that says the aquifers will be running out within ten years. This doesn't seem to track. They take water out of the river and put the same amount back in as its a closed system in a pipe. How can they be responsible for lower water levels if they are net zero in usage? Send me a link that backs up your claim that they are depleting the water table so I can fix the holes in my knowledge
- chromatin 3y ago> It gets worse; Microsoft datacenters have been allowed to use up huge amounts of drinking water for cooling; it gets treated to avoid clogging up the lines, heated up, then just dumped back in the river. > It's shameful and wasteful What you've described does not sound shameful OR wasteful?
- Spooky23 3y agoIt’s not so much fun if you’re a fish.
- prottog 3y agoNot so much fun for a fish, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. Existence itself carries a cost to those around the being that exists; should it be feasible for a datacenter and fish to coexist it ought to be done, but were I to pick one over the other, I'm afraid the fish has to go.
- pjc50 3y agoAll sorts of things can be tracked through wastewater; cocaine use, COVID prevalence, that kind of thing. As always "if done correctly" carries a bit of an asterisk.
- kossTKR 3y agoThat's interesting and quite worrying isn't it? Makes sense that with such a huge global pop and increasing usage of medicines and pesticides the global water supply will eventually turn into a toxic sludge. Anti depressants have just been found deep underwater in Antarctica so it seems all fish are swimming in a soup of blood thinners and psycho-active medication. I wonder when the ocean ecosystem will collapse from this and when humans will turn "weird", if they haven't already done that. Imagine constantly being medicated with 1000 medications from the moment you are in the womb. I hope many of these things are so trace that it's almost homeopathic, ie. doesn't have an effect - can anyone confirm or deny this?
- DarkNova6 3y ago>> I wonder when the ocean ecosystem will collapse from this and when humans will turn "weird", if they haven't already done that Indeed. At least in the case of fish it turned out that plastic pollution starts to affect the hormonal balance males starting from the 3rd generation. Makes you think about the ever lowering sperm-count in males across the board.
- cameronh90 3y agoTangentially, there have been numerous studies linking trace levels of naturally occurring lithium to lower rates of mental health problems and suicide. Maybe we'll find out that the reduction in violence we've seen since the 90s is partially due to SSRIs in the water. Might not be helping obesity rates either.
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoNot really, as far as water is concerned. One of the less well publicized great advances of the past decade is that we have essentially solved desalinization. Recent advances in the reverse osmosis process mean that capital costs for desalinization capacity have been driven low enough that they can be economically powered by off-peak intermittent power, essentially using reservoirs of fresh water as a grid battery of sorts. The cost of solar and wind in the places that need fresh water are low enough that this can economically replace natural fresh water even in middle-income countries. Large-scale buildouts are ongoing. We will not need "extreme water recycling" to provide anyone with sufficient water. Not that it's a bad idea anyway, because it's good for the environment to recycle the other stuff that you pull out of the wastewater stream.
- pjc50 3y ago> can be economically powered by off-peak intermittent power, The problem with anything designed to run "off peak" is that you have to pay the capital cost the whole time, even while it's not operating. Do you have some examples you can cite? There's a lot of stuff that can be done but isn't yet at scale.
- Ekaros 3y agoQuestion really then becomes how much does it cost to over provision for 100% or 200%. Allowing to run 12h or 8h for the needed daily capacity. There is certain fixed costs for facility and then adding capacity increases on top of that. But question is really by how much? 10-50% for 200% or 300% capacity might be acceptable if that sum is saved in energy costs.
- pmoriarty 3y ago"To demonstrate its technology, Epic Cleantec, a water recycling company, has even brewed a beer called Epic OneWater Brew with purified graywater from a 40-story San Francisco apartment building." I've got to say that this beer would not be high on my list of beers to try.
- WJW 3y agoPretty much all beer is made with recycled water though, it's just that usually the recycling process takes much longer and with a detour through the ocean and some clouds. As long as the water is chemically identical to what you'd get from a river or something like that I don't really care what they make my beers out of tbh.
- rolisz 3y agoI think that detour through the ocean and the clouds can make quite a difference in the outcome...
- ninkendo 3y agoHence “as long as it’s chemically identical” (which it absolutely can be)… as in, it really doesn’t make a difference in the end.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoAlthough, if its main selling point is “made with greywater”, maybe its just not that great of a drink regardless of the water used.
- viraptor 3y agoI'm not sure how much difference there is before you hit the artificial filtering/cleaning system. The detour through the ocean and clouds may turn out to include filtering through a decomposing body of a raccoon right before you get the water into the production system.
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- dghughes 3y ago>Eventually it’s hoped that buildings will be completely self-sufficient, or “water neutral,” using the same water over and over, potable and nonpotable, in a closed loop. I can't see that working have they not heard of evaporation? It would work but need a top up. It's a good idea to save water but it may need some fine-tuning for technical reasons and for acceptance by people.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoIt also rains every now and then.
- hinkley 3y agoSometimes not for months.
- fredrikholm 3y agoEven more reason not to pipe the little water we have right into the ocean.
- hinkley 3y agoIt’s not drinking water though. Or at least not ours. It’s “Dilution is the solution to pollution.” We are dumping borderline water and hoping the people downstream don’t sue because it’s X% of the flow.
- baud147258 3y agoMaybe that'd be an easier goal to achieve with some form of dry toilets
- chiefalchemist 3y agoFwiw, urine is a natural fertilizer. Yet we piss it away, literally. And as far as I know, human waste and animal (i.e., dog) waste are compostable; as is coffee grains, and other kitchen scraps. Such plenty and availability could be an advantage for urban farming. Perhaps every many-story building could devote a floor or two to such "recycling"? Given how much excess commercial space there is it's not that crazy of an idea. That is the floors for recycling would find a place in the market's excess.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoPhosphates are already won and reused from grey water in The Netherlands: https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/nieuws/2021/02/24/ruim-baan-voor-fosfaat-uit-rioolwater https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/nieuws/2021/02/24/ruim-baan-voor-...
- meindnoch 3y agoimagine the smell
- vincnetas 3y agoThere are more stinky chemical processes that our industry does, this does not mean that you have to go and smell them. I see no problem here if the smell is properly contained.
- yardie 3y agoUrine is full of phosphates that are good for plants. Up to a point my neighborhood has a lot of dead trees and bushes from dog walkers burning (chemically) them. Human and animal waste is compostable but only at industrial scale. They have to brought to a high temperature to kill bacteria and then aerobic bacteria has to be introduced to begin the process. This is not something your backyard composter can do. It’s why only allow pant matter. Composting animal waste is so much harder.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoAren't there toilets that turn human waste into compost? Isn't that the ideal goal of the Gates' Foundation challenge?
- throwaway22032 3y agoDoes water recycling accentuate issues with stuff like concentrating PFAS, microplastics etc? I guess it depends on how thorough the filtration is, whether reverse osmosis is used.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothey detect microplastics in the rain; they evaporate. recycling won't do much to help remote or add, it's already there
- hanniabu 3y agodetectable does not mean containing the same concentration
- Havoc 3y agoWould love to see new builds factoring this in better too. i.e Grey water. Flushing toilets with flawless drinking water is insane
- erik_seaberg 3y agoOn one hand, we don't need potable water to flush a toilet. On the other hand, flushing a toilet with dirty water is going to leave your house smelling like whatever's in that water.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoAlready graywater is used in places like San Diego for watering public greenage, but I can’t detect any smell. Even if there is some very slight smell, sticking an ordinary deodorizer on your toilet bowl might be enough to suppress it entirely.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt doesn't have to be dirty / smelly, but it doesn't have to be fresh drinking water either. Filtered rain water is fine for example, plus bonus low mineral count to keep your pipes and toilet cleaner.
- throwaway290 3y agoYou should close the lid before flushing anyway... Stops bacteria spraying around
- throwaway290 3y agoI am guessing at least two people have issues with bathroom hygiene. Pro tip: you do not want fecal matter around.
- Faaak 3y agoI collect rainwater and flush my toilet + wash my clothes with it. It's not safe to drink, but it doesn't smell of anything and is nearly transparent.
- jmyeet 3y agoDon't let this and other articles fool you: there is absolutely no shortage of water in Californian cities. Every year an absolute mountain of snow drops on the Rockies and melts in the spring. But it gets diverted through an arcane series of water rights, grandfathered deals and outright corruption. Meet the Resnicks [1], who are agricultural billionaires and control a huge chunk of California's water supply. This is why you should get mad whenever you see California invest in desalination [2]. Would you ever use desalination to grow oranges or almonds or alfalfa? No, it's way too expensive. But when you build desalination plants in a place like California what you're really doing is further subsidizing inefficient uses of water for agriculture when you could totally solve the problem by simply growing less water-intensive crops and/or letting some arid land, well, stay arid. [1]: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust/ https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du... [2]: https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/April-23/California-Invests-in-Water-Supply-and-Research-to-Diversify-Local-Water-Supply https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/April-23/Califo...
- rightbyte 3y agoWhere I love there is a fresh water lake where we get our water from and the sewer is cleaned and put back into it. I want some kind of "time buffer" and mass buffer between sewer and drinking if it happens to malfunction abit ...
- Ensorceled 3y ago>>Eventually it’s hoped that buildings will be completely self-sufficient, or “water neutral,” using the same water over and over, potable and nonpotable, in a closed loop. So a condo/apartment has it's own elevators, solar rooftop, and now a hi reliability water recycling system that can support a few hundred units. Sounds financially viable at scale ...
- AHOHA 3y ago>Sounds financially viable at scale ... You will still have to pay taxes, fees, condo maintenance fees, etc. that are far more financially worse than if you just paid for these in the old traditional way.
- Ensorceled 3y agoI don't think you are getting my point ... waste and water treatment and power generation are things that go down in cost with scale. Trying to get waste treatment and water purification and power generation to operate at the scale of a few 100s of people isn't viable.
- AHOHA 3y agoAgreed, I see what you mean.
- jerf 3y agoYeah, that was my first thought too. It's a very San Francisco solution... expensive and ineffective, if not outright counterproductive, but very virtuous looking. A building being "self-sustaining" from an all-things-considered accounting perspective is not a bad goal, but there's no reason the "self-sustaining"-ness of a building needs to be physically co-located with the building. It's not like we anticipate the building taking off into space at some point in the future where it will need this functionality on its own. It is far more sensible to work proper water recycling into all the other fees they're paying anyhow.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- lucidguppy 3y agoThis stuff is good - but it's penny wise. Agriculture is outright wasteful of water. California agriculture consumes 80% of the state's water. https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agricultural-Water-Use-Efficiency https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric... Its an environmental equivalent of Amdahl's law - spending so much effort to make a small portion of the water use efficient when we can work far less to make agriculture more efficient. Of course its all because of lobbying.
- DoneWithAllThat 3y agoGrowing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of millions of people, and cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition, being “wasteful” is certainly a take.
- ayemel 3y agoYou misread (I also did). They are saying wasteful water use for agriculture is wasteful, not agriculture itself.
- mistrial9 3y agosome commodity crops and some niche groups absolutely are wasteful.. excess crops turned to processed, canned food or even sugar-fuels have changed farming in the last hundred+ years. Do not even mention animal practices, since that ranges from the mildly terrible to literally hell'ish, also big water users.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> Growing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of millions of people Large scale does not imply efficiency. Soviet union did many things large scale > cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition Millions were lifted out of poverty. Rhey lifted themaelves out of malnoutricioun because now they can afford food.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoAbsolutely true. Without agriculture, there would be plenty of water for residential uses. Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death, so banning farming is no solution. But one thing we can and should do immediately is stop (effectively) exporting huge amounts of water from Arizona to Saudi Arabia for free. That's very low-hanging fruit. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizona-ground-water-crop-alfalfa/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
- daedlanth 3y ago[dead]
- resolutebat 3y agoSingapore has been making and using "NEWater" from wastewater (sewage) since 2003. It forms only around 1% of tap water supplies, the biggest customers are industrial users like chip fabs that need really, really clean water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater It's worth noting, though, that Singapore has invested a lot into potable water tech like this not because it makes financial sense in itself (it doesn't), but because the vast majority of Singapore's drinking water is piped in from Malaysia, which thus has a literal stranglehold over the country.
- stOneskull 3y agoif only desalination wasn't so difficult. it'd solve so many things.
- ReptileMan 3y agoWell desalination for residential is ok financially in high income countries. It costs 5$ for 1000 gallons and that is the monthly consumption of a household
- recursive 3y ago$5/month/household sounds like it would work for all but the very poorest of countries.
- TylerE 3y agoFor costal regions, sure. Anything further inland? Pumping water uphill is incredibly energy intensive.
- thmsths 3y agoThat would still help those regions too, a lot of coastal cities get their water from quite far away, if they can become self sufficient through desalination, that's more water available for other regions.
- j-a-a-p 3y agoIn 2015, San Francisco required all new buildings of more than 100,000 square feet to have on-site recycling systems. That is great news for all the ISO certified labs out there that need to perform the daily water quality checks.
- snarfy 3y agoI remember reading a statistic saying Phoenix tap water has the highest amount of toilet paper particulates in the country.
- abeppu 3y ago> Highly treated wastewater ... is injected into nearby groundwater, to be pumped up and treated to drinking-water standards by local utilities. This seems convoluted; if it's clean enough to go in the ground, and ground-water is clean enough to treat and then add to the drinking-water supply, is it really just optics to use the local aquifer as a buffer, or is there some actual benefit from traveling through the ground (maybe different dissolved minerals?).
- astrodust 3y agoIt's just perception. People don't like drinking processed piss.
- Eisenstein 3y agoAll water was once dinosaur piss.
- hanniabu 3y agoI don't care about human waste, that's easily taken care of. I'm concerned with all the chemicals and toxic materials that get dumped down the drain.
- sp332 3y agoSoil is a great filter. There are some contaminants that will get through, but the downstream treatment systems can focus on those. Here is a recent paper showing that just letting runoff filter through a 45cm-thick "rain garden" reduces a certain toxic chemical (6PPD-Quinone) by 90%. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00203 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00203
- abeppu 3y agoThanks for sharing, that's really interesting -- but do those contaminants remain in the soil? It seems like one of the following should be true: - the treated wastewater being pumped into the ground has been so successfully treated that it doesn't contain more harmful contaminants than ground water, and so it could be just piped through to the same treatment as ground water, saving a pump-into-ground + pump-out-of-ground cycle - the treated wastewater being pumped into the ground contains harmful contaminants at a greater concentration than existing ground water, which the soil may mediate before being pumped back up for further treatment -- but the concentration of these contaminants in the soil will increase as a result
- dbg31415 3y agoInstead of making people use rainwater and inflating building costs by building parallel plumbing systems, how about do something about agriculture and lawns instead? SF continues to save pennies by throwing away dollars.
- DrThunder 3y agoHow about people just not live there? Why should the rest of the US be required to support well-off individuals in SF that want green lawns?
- linuxftw 3y agoFor just about any commercial or residential building, the only suitable (IMO) use for graywater would be toilets, and it's not particularly suitable for toilets with a tank, so that rules out just about all residential. The article also uses the term 'purified' which is non-specific. All sorts of things end up in water: soaps, detergents, drain-o, medications, you name it. You can't just distill it, some chemicals are volatile. You can't just filter it, some contaminants will pass through. On a city-wide scale, it only introduces more problems. Having pressurized gray water would require an entire new set of lines, and hopefully the people installing them don't accidentally connect the lines to the wrong distribution (it will happen inevitably). So yes, it's a feel-good story, but it's nonsense. No way to capture the economies of scale, and the water isn't suitable for most uses.
- adrr 3y agoMy city has a grey water system that is used for landscaping irrigation. We also do toilet to tap and inject treated sewage back into the groundwater.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> hopefully the people installing them don't accidentally connect the lines to the wrong distribution (it will happen inevitably). They can already make that mistake. And they can do that with electricity too. If you employ idiots, there is no way to be safe. > No way to capture the economies of scale Does this sentence mean anything? Does a water reservoir "capture economies of scale" in a way that purifying wastewater of aan entire city doesnt? Does building a giant canal to readistribute water?
- piyushpr134 3y agoBangalore does this and more. We pump our sewage, after secondary treatment, to nearby towns' lakes which are parched. Farmers, in that region, love this water as it is full of organic material which is great for farming. LOL! Of course, there can be issues like heavy metals etc which we do not care about at all! Read about this here: https://www.newindianexpress.com/good-news/2022/jun/05/how-karnatakas-kc-valley-project-is-springing-waterbodies-back-to-life-2461925.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/good-news/2022/jun/05/how-k... and https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-infrastructure/unga-chief-terms-kc-valley-project-transformational-1187015.html https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-infrastructure/u...
- syngrog66 3y agoin broadstrokes, we need agriculture, and to eat, drink and wash our bodies and clothing we dont need green lawns, golf courses, swimming pools and car washes. we have lots of "low hanging fruit" if desired to drastically reduce watwr use in the coming years
- prottog 3y ago> we dont need green lawns, golf courses, swimming pools and car washes. Sure, we don't "need" anything nice. But few people want to live at a subsistence farming level. San Francisco (about which the article was written) averages over 20" of rain a year, and with its mild climate, lawns and golf courses shouldn't be a problem. We need agriculture, yes, but we don't need it to be in the places that it is in at the moment. 30% of all lettuce grown in the US is from Yuma County, AZ[0], which gets low single-digits inches of rain a year. It's farcical, but on its own it wouldn't be a problem as long as the water they do get is from a sustainable source (i.e. not tapping into aquifers that take millennia to fill). It would be much better to grow thirsty crops like that east of the Mississippi, where precipitation is plentiful. [0]: https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/blog/post/?id=2699 https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/blog/post/?id=2699
- freedude 3y ago"We need agriculture, yes, but we don't need it to be in the places that it is in at the moment." Have you moved to these locations and grown lettuce? Are you speaking from experience? If not, I can assure you the climate is significantly different East of the Mississippi than it is in Yuma. Because of this the growing methods and associated costs dramatically change the profit margins, which are already very slim. i.e. it becomes unprofitable very quickly because "green" energy has increased overall energy costs.
- hanniabu 3y agoI wouldn't trust the US to recycle water. I don't even trust the water as it is. The country is too profit-driven, too quick to loosen regulation, and too bad at enforcing regulation. People pour all types of chemicals down the drain....pharmaceuticals, solvents, paint, oil, and whatever other liquid they have to dispose. There's no way that's cost efficient to properly filter out and certain things there's no safe levels so even trace amounts shouldn't be allowed.
- hosh 3y agoI don’t know why this author frames it this way. Recycling greywater is an old technology. People in Tuscon pioneered municipal laws to allow this, which then spread across Arizona. Blackwater treatment comes in many forms — your septic tank with a leach field is an example. The Earthship folks out in Taos, NM have designs that recycles residential water at least five times for years. There are permaculture sites that have been doing this, and advocating for this for years. There are commercial sites recycling greywater here in Arizona. A major outlet mall here in Phoenix. Intel’s fab in metro Phoenix (there’s even a slide deck!). The new TSMC fab in Phoenix will use similar methods. It’s not as if a startup invented all of this. These can all be accomplished with fairly low tech. It isn’t even an “extreme” decentralization. If people want to get into “extreme” decentralization, there are also: onsite composting, onsite food production (such as perennial food forests), integrated pest management, etc.
- JohnFen 3y agoYeah, it's very strange framing of what are actually fairly mundane, non-extreme techniques.
- hosh 3y agoI can only speculate that there are still just enough startup techies in San Francisco to keep the echo chamber going. Maybe it helps with getting VC funding?
- majormajor 3y ago"When Dallas flushes the toilet, Houston opens the tap." I've heard snarky sayings like that for decades. Yeah, old news. But some older US cities that wore historically a lot more wasteful never really paid attention, and now think it's new. https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-dallas-toilet-water-for-years-to-come/285-339809592 https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-d...
- DrThunder 3y agoShouldn't the climate aware thing be to move people out of these cities that have no business being in area that's so water scarce? It irks me that all of these climate initiatives involve forcing people to buy expensive EV's, solare panels, give up this/ give up that. But, when it comes to the elitists in SF the solution is to just do whatever it takes to allow them to live in a dried up state that has scarce water resources. No, you can move. Time to practice what you preach.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago[flagged]
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- brianaker 3y agoI use rainwater for gardening that I store in an underground cistern; I would not recommend this to most people. The water is only useful during the summer when Seattle receives no rainfall, and during the rest of the year the cistern is used to handle stormwater surges during the rest of the year. Unless you can store water in a tower, you will need a pump. The pump we have for our cistern can handle grey water; it can handle a certain amount of muck in the water. Even with filtering you will end needing to clean your cistern at some interval, and the penalty for not doing this? You will burn up the pump. The Yale article is entirely unrealistic for residential and much of what it talks about would only work for some very large buildings that don't have any mixed usage ( if you follow the links in the article, you will find that the water system installed in the one San Fran had a starting cost of $1M dollars, which did not include all of the redundant return sanitary plumbing ). The article glosses over the fact that you cannot re-use water in your home and that this is not going to change. Reusing water that was used for washing your clothes? People put all sorts of stuff into their washing machines and not all of it can be cost effectively, or even safely, reused just for toilet water. In one word? "bleach" Any sort of cleaning is going to involve soaps, detergents, etc... none of which you want to pump into a pipe with a smallish diameter to feed to a toilet. Environmentally? It is not worth the copper nor the electric required for a pump; a pump which would need to be designed to handle the grey water. Your municipal water is likely to be gravity fed, which is energy efficient. Let's talk about the reality of residential properties. Home owners are never 100% on top of every maintenance requirements and adding systems which will require ongoing maintenance and refitting? That is not viable. Even using rainwater for toilets is not going to be cost effective, or reliable. You may believe your rain water is "all natural", but that is far from the truth once it hits your roof and makes its way to where you believe you are going to store it. It will need to be treated/cleaned before it can be use; which will then require its own pump that requires electricity. The Yale article is misleading, at best.
- jimt1234 3y agoThe only thing that irks me about water recycling is the seemingly discriminatory nature of the implementation. This is only from my experience in my area of Southern California where it's been talked about for years, and implemented in certain areas. Those implemented areas have consistently been lower-income, which never made sense to me. I would think the higher-income areas use more water because of lush landscaping (any view of zip codes on Google Earth will show this) and swimming pools (or other recreational use). Also, any changes (like re-piping or whatever) is probably easier in higher-income areas, as the neighborhoods tend to be newer, with more room for construction work. It just feels discriminatory, like, "Let the poors have the dirty water."
- thelastgallon 3y agoElectric power generators are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals and account for about 40% of total water withdrawals in the United States: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453
- jondwillis 3y agoI wonder how this could work with bidets.