Green Options

Having grown up in the beautiful Chicagoland area in the 80’s my water needs were strictly as follows: Need #1: Water from hose to power clown-face sprinkler, fill water balloons, and hose off muddy dirt-bike/self, Need #2: Water from faucet to occasionally brush teeth and occasionally make Hi-C or Tang, Need #3: Water from shower to occasionally bathe. It was a simpler time, and I was a kid. To me and most other kids (adults?) in the 80’s water was simply there, always on the ready for any and all of the above dalliances.

The days of water-logged frivolity are over. We now live in a time where many parts of the world face water shortages, limited access to safe, clean drinking water, an ever-diminishing groundwater supply, and a growing number of water-related disease and death.

In fact, just last week, motivated by three years of water shortages in California, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency which may be followed by water rationing measures.

As a result of the myriad of water emergencies that the world faces I have put together a short-list of the 5 world-saving water solutions that offer hope for the future of our water, and therefore our existence.

Seawater Greenhouse inventor Charles Paton teams with the Eden Project and Grimshaw Architects to create the Teatro del Agua.

I last posted on the Seawater Greenhouse in February. After writing that post I felt hopeful that this type of desalination plant would catch on, yet pessimistic that, based on the pictures I saw, it would neither reach the necessary scale to create enough clean water nor attract the type of investors needed to take this plant to the next level.

I’m very happy to find out that I was wrong.

I researched the Seawater Greenhouse again to look for breaking news because I decided back in February that I needed to post on this on a regular basis to spread the word on the technology. By the looks of the Seawater Greenhouse Inventor Charles Paton’s latest project, my effort will not be needed.

Just as the Prius will replace the Hummer on our nation’s roads, the Teatro del Agua shall replace the energy intensive desalination plants of old, worldwide. All the while supplying said world with an endless supply of water and creating an outdoor venue for theatrical performances. Afterall, you can’t spell WATER without A-R-T. (below average pun–my apologies)

As populations grow and the amount of clean, fresh water decreases, we are increasingly motivated to find new ways of creating/capturing and using fresh water. Of course, we could all begin by using less water (see footnote). According to the United Nations Development Program in a chart I found on www.data360.org, as of 2006, the average American uses approximately 151 gallons of water/day. That includes, drinking, showering, flushing, cleaning, cooking, irrigating, etc. I propose that if we were each given 25 gallons of water to use per day we’d be OK. But, water isn’t dropped off at your doorstep by the water man, so we are not inclined to think much about our consumption (until something drastic occurs, like the droughts the Atlanta area faced this past summer). Then, how can people get more of what they are all using way too much of without drawing from other overused freshwater sources? An increasingly viable option is to take the salt out of the ocean’s roughly 315 million trillion gallons of saltwater. I posted last month on a low-energy solar desalination plant, so it’d be neglectful of me not to point out this no energy windmill desalination system as well.

In the Netherlands, at the Delft University of Technology, a traditional windmill is being tested to drive seawater through a reverse-osmosis membrane, thus directly producing freshwater from seawater. On their website, www.drinkingwiththewind.nl they share the following:

On the basis of the windmill’s capacity at varying wind speeds, it is estimated that it will produce 5 to 10 m3 (1,321-2,642 U.S. gallons) of fresh water per day: enough drinking water for a small village of 500 inhabitants. A water reservoir will have to ensure that enough water is available for a calm period lasting up to five days.

Three-hundred twenty-six million trillion! It sounds like a number I would come up with as a kid, say, in reference to the number of things I find disgusting about my sister, or the number of reasons I need a new bike, or the number of mosquito bites I got on a weekend camping trip. But, it turns out, 326 million trillion is a real number. It happens to be (approximately—because who could count them all?) the number of gallons of water on our wonderful planet (Earth). That’s an overwhelming, impressive and — when you learn that 98% of that water is ocean water, and therefore too salty to consume, or use for irrigation — frustrating figure!

In these times where climate chaos has caused more frequent severe droughts, and our population continues to grow (read: consume water) at an awesome rate, people are becoming more and more concerned with water conservation. Humanity finds itself increasingly at a loss for freshwater while roughly 315 million trillion gallons of unusable seawater taunts us from our shores.

Sure, desalination plants are becoming more common. They are very expensive, however, and so energy intensive that they only further contribute to the climate change they are attempting remedy (thereby, joining corn-based ethanol as the two largest non-solutions to our climate problems).

Fear not my fellow water-loving earthlings! There is an even better way to remove the salt from salt water: a Seawater Greenhouse! This UK-based company explains the process as one that:

uses seawater to cool and humidify the air that ventilates the greenhouse and sunlight to distill fresh water from seawater. This enables the year round cultivation of high value crops that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to grow in hot, arid (conditions).