Water is essential to all life – it feeds and fuels humans, wildlife and the earth’s ecosystems that are necessary for this planet to survive. The pollution of water can negatively impact all living creatures and is the one natural resource that rises above all others and can not be substituted or mass produced through technology.
Water reuse. The good news about water reuse is that some day we will all be drinking treated wastewater, the bad news is that there will not be enough to go around. Reuse is the least familiar of all strategies. It is basically “reusing” treated wastewater for other purposes. We typically think of grey water, like taking the water from our washing machines and spraying on our lawns. Greywater is washwater not to be confused with water from your toilet which is “blackwater”. We do not do a lot of this in Texas, about 10 percent of all wastewater is reused. (Texas Parks and Wildlife, 2002) Other countries like Israel use as much as 60 percent.
If you wanted to plan a greywater system for you and your family’s use, here is how to get started.
1. Take a brief inventory of the house's greywater sources and the number of uses that they get or could get.
| Laundry | | gal / person . day |
| Dishwasher | | gal / person . day |
| Bath | | gal / person . day |
| Other sources | | gal / person . day |
| Total greywater | | gal / person . day |
Try to determine how many gals. per cycle your appliances use--or use the short-form sizing estimator below
| US clotheswashing machine (top-loading) | 30 gallons per cycle |
| European (front-loading) clotheswasher | 10 gallons per cycle |
| Dishwasher | 3 - 5 gallons per cycle |
| Low-flow shower head (per shower) | 3 - 7 gallons per average use |
| Other sink use (shaving, handwashing, etc.) | 1 - 5 gallons per average use |
2. Give special consideration to the final dispersion of the effluent, making sure that the soil can accept the amount of water that will be generated, treated and discharged (your local sanitation engineer can do a percolation test to determine the ability of the ground to accept water). If water shortage happens to be a particular restriction where you're located, note that greywater filtered through a soilbed will not become anaerobic and thus can be saved for [lawn] irrigation. (www.greywater.com)
3. Check with your local authorities regarding any special/local concerns and regulations. Submit your application to the local board of health or consult your local professional engineer (P.E.) for plans and documents needed for your application (usually a topo-graphic site drawing with pertinent information about your site and the proposed solution). If your local P.E. is unfamiliar with alternative greywater pollution prevention systems (e.g., soilbed treatment), provide her/him with the name of this website. (www.greywater.com)
This concept of grey water is genius. It's insane that we haven't already implemented this technique everywhere. When 50% or more of household waste-water is grey water, imagine the amount of water saved from pointless treatment. It benefits the plants to receive grey water because of the waste nutrients found in the cloudy mixture. It probably would have helped Texas this summer if grey water was used; that could have really relieved some drought pressures. Grey water seems to fit perfectly within the social, environmental and economic aspects of a sustainable venture (win, win, win). This water reduction tool should be implemented with any infrastructure plans that we have in the future.
ReplyDeleteHere might be a new way of doing things.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09/a-sink-that-lets-you-recycle-greywater-and-saves-space.php