By Sarah Lozanova •
March 20, 2008
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Water shortages are on the rise, from Mexico to the Andes, northern China to southern India, and Spain to Pakistan. Drought, soaring populations and population densities, changing diets, and increasing living standards are all factors. Is this an issue that technology can fix?
Judging by investors’ responses, the answer seems to be yes. FourWinds will invest up to $4.7 billion in water treatment and desalinization and companies that make meters, pumps, and pipes.
BlueWater Bio is a player in the wastewater and sludge treatment arena. Their claim to fame is a treatment technology called Hybrid Bacillus Activated Sludge (HYBACS). It uses proprietary bacteria that eats waste, saving on chemicals. The high quality treatment effluent has reuse potential for commercial or industrial applications, but I wouldn’t recommend drinking it.
Monsanto’s top 20 experts have been examining how climate science will affect the company, with drought being the leading problem to solve. New drought-resistant crops are being created.
“The most advanced of these is now a drought-tolerant corn product … commercializable within several years,” said Monsanto’s head of technology strategy and development David Fischhoff . “We expect this to be the first generation of an ongoing stream.”
By Carol Gulyas •
March 19, 2008
People are familiar with motion-sensing faucets that turn on when people move their hands under them, and automatically turn themselves off, so they don’t have to handle the germy handles. People like that. But Toto takes this design much further with its Ecopower faucet, which saves energy AND water. How? It uses “self-generating hydropower” to automatically recharge a tiny battery in the faucet, thus saving the electricity [...]
By Joe Mohr •
March 16, 2008
After concluding last week’s post with water conservation tips, I was motivated to look deeper into more steps homeowners can take to conserve water, as well as the new technology surrounding this issue. I found all I needed (and MUCH more) at www.h2ouse.org.
The website was created by the California Urban Water Conservation Council under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They’ve covered everything! For example, in the ‘Home Tour’ section alone they have indoor information on The Bathroom, Kitchen, Laundry, Garage, and Basement and outdoor information on Landscaping, Pool and Spa, Patio, and The Water Meter. To give you further insight on the depth of this site, if you click on the link to the kitchen (which is an illustration looking very much like a Hanna/Barbera cartoon) you are given info and tips regarding: Faucet, Dishwasher, Home Water Treatment, Hot Water on Demand, and Greywater and/or Dual Water Systems.
By Joe Mohr •
March 8, 2008
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.
By Joe Mohr •
March 1, 2008
ECO2 Plastics makes me want to dance–although this was after it made me want to sob. I’ll get to the latter later. The former is why I’ve titled this post “Environmental Boogaloo”. Boogaloo (bugalu) is a type of Latin dance and music and, after speaking with the good folks at ECO2 Plastics, I want to dance!
Why I Wanted to Sob
In getting info for this article I found out what ECO2 CEO Rod Rougelot calls “recycling’s dirty little secret.” During the process of recycling plastic, tons of water is wasted during cleaning. This water is not your ordinary run-of-the-watermill water, however. A variety of harmful acids and detergents are added to the water to clean the contaminants, glue, and labels off the plastic. Deflocculants are then added to pull the solids out of the wastewater. Finally, (and this is a very general explanation of the process) the wastewater is treated to balance the pH level of the water. This is done through the use of more chemicals. End result: one, sanitized plastic ready to be recycled; two, a cocktail of harmful, detergents, chemicals, acids, bases, deflocculants, and contaminants headed down the drain and back into our fresh water supply (approximately 40 million gallons per year to be–approximately–exact). When I verbalized my feelings of being hoodwinked, Rougelot quickly pointed out that, although a dirty, wasteful process, it is still better than creating plastic from scratch. Thanks for the verbal tissue Rod. Goodbye, for now, tears!
By Cassie Walker •
February 21, 2008
Some disturbing news came out this week about the future of Lake Mead, a man-made lake on the Arizona-Nevada border created by the Hoover Dam. According to researchers, there is a 50% chance that the lake will be dry by 2021, unless we take action now. Even scarier? The 10% chance that this catastrophe will occur within 6 years. OK, I’m officially freaked out.
Why is Lake Mead’s survival so crucial? Courtesy of melting snowpack feeding the Colorado River, the lake supplies 90% of Las Vegas’ water. Yes, you read that correctly: 90%. The Colorado system also meets much of the demand in the rest of the Southwest, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson. Without this source, the current drought experienced in this region will become exponentially worse.
In an effort to curb water consumption, the city of Austin is offering free, low-flow toilets to residents whose commodes are more than 12 years old and have tanks larger than 1.6 gallons.
Photo courtesy of Jarhelm via Wikimedia Commons
By Pem Charnley •
February 12, 2008
It comes as rather a shock to see New Zealanders in the news, arguing amongst themselves about the missing chapter of a report - questioning their very own green credentials. The chapter in question is unfortunately number 13.
(Not overly unfortunate that it was chapter 13, granted, but it allows me to clumsily shoehorn the word triskaidekaphobia into a piece of writing for the first - and hopefully - last time.)
Included in a statement by the country’s Green Party is the following:
“Chapter 13 states some inconvenient truths about the causes of environmental decline in New Zealand – causes such as dairy intensification, increased car use, and consumption. And it makes some inconvenient recommendations for action such as national environmental regulation and more public transport. Moreover it warns our economy is threatened by our poor environmental performance.”
The Green Party’s reaction has been thorough as the accompanying YouTube video shows.
But I’d like to just concentrate for now on dairy farming. It isn’t perhaps at the forefront of many people’s minds when we think of environmental decline. Conjure up the word “cattle” and more often, it is intensively reared beef rather than milk production that causes a reaction.
Is there really a downside to water conservation? Apparently, yes, if you’re a municipality whose water revenues are plummeting because citizens are taking care to use less water.
Image courtesy of Dschwen at Wikimedia Commons
By Cassie Walker •
October 4, 2007
This week, I began the Living Green Workshop, a six-week class developed and taught by a non-profit based in Santa Monica, CA called Sustainable Works. Though I write for Green Options and am active in the green community here, I figured I would still learn something. Boy howdy, did I!
The first class: water. An astounding 70% of Southern California’s water is transported in from other areas, mostly Northern California. Even more
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By Max Lindberg •
June 7, 2007
Image credit: Tena Engelman/National Park ServiceToday we talk about Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement (EASI) programs around the country. It all started in Pennsylvania ten years ago; now, EASI senior volunteers are involved in a wide range of projects, including trying to save a lake in Mexico.
Today's podcast is available here.
