Global water shortage

It's difficult to remember that other areas of the world are increasingly getting drier due to global climate change and the loss of topsoil due to industrial agricultural practices (less plant life + less trees = less moisture captured in an area). Since we tend to get so much steady rain in Seattle, I usually don't consider water shortages as the top of my list of things to worry about. But it should.

For many people in the rest of the world, that's not at all the case. In fact, water is a resource people are and will fight more and more over. Riparian rights and state's rights over water resources have been and still are a huge issue in America's southwest and will only get worse as a large growing population drains aquifers with little replenishing them.

Here are some cheery facts I received in my email from Sustainable Ballard:

• While the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, those in developing countries cannot find five. (www.charitywater.org)
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. (www.water.org)
• A water footprint, or virtual water, is the amount of water used in the entire production and/or growth of a specific product. For example, 2.2 lbs of beef has a water footprint of 4,226.8 gallons; one sheet of paper has a water footprint of 2.6 gallons; one cup of tea has a water footprint of 9.2 gallons; and one microchip has a water footprint of 8.5 gallons. (CircleofBlue.org)
•Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil. (CBS News, FLOW the film)
• There are over 116,000 human-made chemicals that are finding their way into public water supply systems. (William Marks, author of Water Voices from Around the World, FLOW the film.)
• According to the National Resources Defense Council, in a scientific study in which more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water were tested, about one-third of the bottles contained synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic. (www.nrdc.org)

When we lived in California, I was much more concerned about water availability, mostly because I was reminded of how arid it was every day. In fact, my husband used to have nightmares of turning on the tap and having brown, muddy water come out. But, now that we are back in the land of wetness, those thoughts are not so pressing.

Do you feel like scarcity and health of the world's fresh water sources is an issue? Or is it so far down your list of concerns you don't really think about it?

Related books: For an awesome book about water and the American West, check out Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition

Bottled water is best

I've come to the hideous conclusion that we are all being duped about bottled water. I first was made aware of the bottle water issue when the City of Seattle stopped providing bottled water to its employees, stating that it was for financial and environmental reasons.

But, I have since learned that it's really just part of a nationwide conspiracy trying to put the bottled water industry out of business. Sure, the water in the bottles was really just municipal tap water, the same as that which came out of the sinks, but don't they realize the pipes in those old city buildings are probably contaminating everyone? The same reason why they shut down the fountains in so many Seattle Public Schools?

Bottled water is actually a cost savings when you think about the health care costs of dealing with lead and arsenic poisoning. So, why are people targeting the bottled water industry? An industry where 90% of the companies are small, family-owned businesses? It doesn't make any sense to me especially when buying local and supporting small businesses is inherent to our economic survival.

Anyway, I hadn't thought about the water bottle issue recently until last night when I was enjoying the den of inequities on Facebook, when that annoying Bill McKibben hanger-on, Ruchi, intruded my bliss and Facebooked a message to Beth Terry, of Fake Plastic Fish fame, about some scurrying going on in the comments of her blog. Not one to miss out on the hubbub, I checked out Beth's post. And, wouldn't you know it, it's about bottled water.

After the eye-rolling stopped long enough so I could actually read her post, I started going through the comments, which were filled with the usual pap, high-fiving comments in agreement that the "big" business bottled water industry was bad.

Before I get too far, let me back up and say that I don't drink much bottled water. Really, none, if I can help it, mostly because I'm cheap and don't like to pay for something I can get for free. But, I just don't get the whole crucifixion of the bottled water industry. And then, I started reading some rather informative arguments by a commenter from the IBWA. Now, I really do feel for people who suffer from Irritable Bowel With Anal-leakage (IBWA), because that has to be an uncomfortable condition to live with, so, right off the bat, he had my attention.

He argued (among other strong points that you'll have to read in the comments of the original post) that, "blogs like yours should encourage more recycling and not discourage consumption of water — in any form. Water is fundamentally good for all people. We live in a busy world and have bottled water there when you want, regardless of what you are doing, is always a plus. If people are going to a vending machine, what should they buy? What item in the vending machine is not made of plastic? Since it all must be recycled, why pick on the healthiest beverage available, namely bottled water?" Damn straight. Why pick on water when there's plenty of other mean beverages out there?

After much pondering on the matter, I decided to state my change of view on drinking bottled water. In fact, his other, convincing arguments changed my whole opinion on plastic consumption altogether. Well, it's easier to understand my point of view if you just read the response I posted in the comments:

Normally, I just drink tap water. I think it tastes great. When I’m at home I drink straight from the tap since I don’t like the filtered water from my GE Profile fridge because the water is too cold. When I’m at work I drink the water from the kitchen sink. I am generally never at a loss for cups, mugs, or portable containers to fill said water from the tap.

But, after reading all these compelling arguments from Tom, I’ve decided that, perhaps, I’m going about it all wrong. So, starting tomorrow, I’m going to start drinking bottled water. I want to help support family businesses. And, now I’m really scared that I’m going to get H1N1 from the kitchen sink at work. I heard that Fiji water is the best, so I’m going to try to find out where they sell it in my area. I don’t believe it’s a family company, but the bottles are really cool.

In fact, I’m so excited about drinking bottled water and its positive effects on my life and others, I think that the health benefits of drinking bottled water alone are not enough. Because of this, I’m going to not only recycle the bottles when I’m done drinking the delicious, chlorine-free water, but I am going to eat them. I suspect that the extra fiber in the plastic bottles will help contribute to my overall bowel health. Which is always a positive in my book. Does anyone know if digested plastic will clog my pipes?

I’m thinking that just plain water in the plastic bottles isn’t good enough, so I’m also looking for a company that sells liquid plastic in plastic bottles to help quench my thirst. Does anyone know if such a product exists? I don’t need flavored liquid plastic, just plain liquid plastic will do.

I’m so excited about the thirst quenching satisfaction that my new lifestyle will afford me, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

So, I hope that, you too, decide to drink more bottled water. And consume more plastic if you can. Because bottled water really is the first, true, thirst mutilator.

Turn your old toilet into a dual flush

First, let me state for the record, that I have absolutely no association or contact with this product or company. I haven't seen it in action or know how well it works, but wanted to let you guys know about it.

I was listening to a story about dual-flush toilets on NPR and looked into this option because of the cost and "recycling" of your current toilet. That said, let me tell you what the heck I'm talking about.

It's called the Perfect Flush and it's from Brondell. Basically, it works on your current toilet and, after installing a few doodads onto the tank, turns it into a dual-flush toilet. Half-Flush for urine and TP and the like and Full-Flush for when you need more gusto.

One of the benefits of converting your current toilet is that it will not only save you time and money, but your toilet won't end up in the landfill. Now, I'm not going to claim that this thing will allow you to flush tennis balls, potatoes and t-shirts, like the ones features in the NPR story, but if you don't want to replace your entire toilet and like the idea of a dual-flush toilet, then this thing might be worth checking out.

Do you have a dual flush toilet? If not, how do you go about saving water when it comes to flushing?

Cash 4 Grass

Apparently, California's drought is hitting an all time low (high?) such that the city of Los Angeles is now paying people $1 per square foot to replace their grass with a drought-resistant alternative.

Now, this program may not be as lucrative as the highly esteemed Cash 4 Gold scheme, but if you live in L.A. and you have between 200 to 2,000 square feet of living lawn (they don't want your old, dead lawn), the Department of Water and Power will pay you to get rid of it. This even includes your parking strip as well.

If you live in L.A. and you aren't taking advantage of this incentive program, considering the new drought ordinances that started in June, you are, well, a moron. I'm sorry for saying it to your face, but there you go. Either that, or you really like grass. And tickets.

Anyway, I think if they offered an equal incentive program in the city of Seattle, the turf would be flying so fast it would look like a meteor hit the place. Of course, I don't know where all that good old chemical laden L.A. turf will go to rest. The giant compost bin in the sky?

What about you? Would you remove your lawn if someone paid you to? And, remember, no one is saying you have to remove all of it.

Harvesting household water

If you live in an area that experiences frequent droughts or you just don't like paying high water bills, there are a number of ways you can capture or reclaim the water that your household uses for other purposes.

First, I want to state that the suggestions I make in this post require very little in the way of equipment, installation or, really, intelligence. The main thing to know is that there are different kinds of water: white water (clean, potable water that you can drink), gray water (used water that may have some chemical or particulate matter in it) and black water (water that has fecal matter in it). Because of the high potential for disease, I'm not going to include black water (mainly water flushed from your toilet) in this discussion because processing that kind of water takes more than most people are interested in doing.

So, what kind of household water can you use?

Rainwater
Well, the most obvious is rainwater capture. Roof run-off collected in rain barrels is the easiest way of going about it, but unless you have multiple rain barrels stationed at every downspout, you won't get a tremendous volume, which is probably okay for most of you anyway. Additionally, most of us aren't interested in digging up the yard and burying a cistern, but that certainly is a great way to store your rainwater. So, I'm going to assume that most people will be willing to try a rain barrel or two, just to see what it's like before investing in anything more complicated.

What can you use your collected rainwater for? If you don't mind lugging around a lot of buckets, you can use it for flushing your toilets, washing your windows or any other number of creative uses in addition to watering your lawn and plants (indoor and outdoor). I also have a low-budget idea for using it for shower water (to be explained in a future post). I would suggest it for washing your car, but you should already know that washing your car at home is a bad idea unless you do so on a permeable surface to filter out the grease, dirt and other goop your car collects. We don't want that dirty water draining straight into the local waterways.

There are a number of potential issues that come up when discussing captured rainwater for use on food plants. Because of the dust, dirt, bird poop and chemicals that can leach from roof surfaces, you might want to look into a "first-flush" system where the first five minutes (or equivalent amount of rainwater) of runoff gets diverted away from your rain barrels. Kind of like rinsing off the roof before using the rain that falls afterwards. Of course, using captured water on fruit or nut trees shouldn't pose a problem.

White water
Here I'm referring to the water that comes from your sinks, bathtub or shower that doesn't get used - mostly because you are waiting for the water to heat up. This water can be collected in buckets (shower/bath) or Tupperware (for smaller sinks and the kitchen). Water captured in clean containers specifically for this purpose can be used for drinking or filling the pet's water bowls. Remember, this water is clean and potable, it just wasn't the "right" temperature. Again, the water collected can be used for watering indoor and outdoor plants as well.

Water from the shower can be used for flushing the toilet (just dump it into the toilet bowl until it flushes) or really any number of the uses mentioned in the above section. Since this water is clean you can use it for food plants with no worries. One thing I like to do is to keep a rain barrel just for dumping warm up water since I know it has no contaminants in it (like the aforementioned bird poop and asphalt shingle juice) and can be safely used on food plants when the rain is less prevalent and I actually need to water my food plants (like during the summer versus the rest of the year).

Gray water
Gray water gets a little more tricky, mostly because of what might be in the water. Used water from the bath, washing machine, and bathroom sink are considered gray water*. It's a little difficult to capture sink water (unless you divert it from the drain), so the easiest gray water to reuse is from a bathtub/shower and washing machine if your machine plumbing drains into a sink or is easy to divert.

Since we are dealing with water that potentially has some contaminants in it, it can safely be used on nonedible landscape plants only. Some plants may be sensitive to the sodium and chloride found in some detergents, but if you are using more natural cleansers this may not be an issue. Gray water may actually be better for your plants since some detergents contain nitrogen or phosphorus which are plant nutrients. Basically, the rule of thumb is to experiment in small quantities with plants and see how it is tolerated and/or use biodegradable soaps.

I would also caution against using diverted washing machine water if you are doing a load of cloth wipes, cloth diapers or the like that may contain fecal matter, since you don't want to be using this water without some extra precautions. In addition, don't keep your gray water sitting around for more than 24 hours, since there is an increased risk of growth, bacterial and otherwise.

Gray water can also be used for watering fruit trees, flushing the toilet or pre-rinsing those poopy cloth diapers. Finally, some areas have laws against using gray water. Since you aren't employing some huge gray water system in the yard, I can't imagine you'd run into any problems, but you should look into it, if you end up diverting all your washing machine water out into the yard or something of the like.

*Water from the kitchen sink drain, garbage disposal and dishwasher usually is considered black water because of high concentrations of organic waste.

What kind of household water do you capture or reuse? If you aren't doing any of the above, which would you be interested in doing?

What's your water footprint?

My kids have been intent on standing at the bathroom sink lately and letting the water run, and run, and run. They think it's water-works time. Hand washing turns into washing whatever toys happen to be in there with them (usually Legos) and I find myself yelling all day long "Turn off the water! You're wasting water!"

Then I still need to physically go in there and wake them from their water-stupor. Usually when they hear me coming the water goes off. Since I can't tell half the time if they are actually washing their hands or screwing around in there, it gets a little difficult.

So, I've been expecting my water bill to be higher than usual. It wasn't. It was actually 26 gallons per day less than this time last year. This is even more astounding since it's been hotter this year and, truth be told, the Slip 'N Slide was put into miserly use a few weeks back.

When I read recently that the average American uses about 100 gallons of water a day I figured we'd be right up there. For comparison, the French and Germans use about 60 gallons a day and people in some tribal villages use less than 10.

So, how did we compare? We use about 45 gallons a day per person, which still seems high to me. What am I doing different than last year? Well, the kids are getting bathed a whole lot less and we aren't flushing the toilets as often. I am wearing some clothes a few times before washing them. I never water the lawn, but that's nothing new. We do a lot of laundry, but we have one of those front-loader water saving kinds, but that's not new either. So, I have to chalk it up to less bathing and flushing.

What's your water footprint? How does it compare to the average? What do you do or what suggestions do you have for reducing your water usage?

Finally, does anyone know of some contraption I could put on the kid's bathroom sink to, at the very least, limit the flow?

Busting Brita's balls

Fake Plastique Fish has taken on a new effort to force responsibility back on Brita for recycling their enormously wasteful water filter cartridges. I'm pretty sure I haven't discussed water filters on my blog since I don't really use them.

I'm more of a tap water gal, even though we have filtered water through our refrigerator. Either way, I'm appalled at the fact that Brita doesn't have a recycling program in the U.S. yet they have one in Europe. This is a point that has always ground my crackers and I'm surprised I never got around to bitching, I mean, blogging about it before.

Anyway, Brita is the #1 water filter in the U.S. and Canada and I'm sure between both countries we blow through tons of water filters that head directly to the landfill to ooze out their chemical goodness.

For those of you who do use water filters, I urge you to reconsider whether or not this is truly necessary. Have you had your water tested? Does it taste bad enough to warrant so much waste? Either way, git on over to the Take Back the Filter site to sign the petition.

Ms. Plastique has also set up a way for you to send her your used filters. It is my understanding that at this time she is only accepting filters from Brita. I'm not suggesting that you switch since you'll have to do something with your old system, but this is a start.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can try to refill the disposable filter. I don't know how easy or safe this is, but thought I'd let you check it out for yourself. I, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable doing this, but that's just me.

This sounds like a great time for a poll! Or two.

PUR marketing

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is currently running a promotional campaign under their brand name PUR where, when you use their product coupons between now and April 6th, for each coupon used, they will donate 1 liter worth of PUR Purifier of Water packets to third world countries.

Using the tag line "Save Money, Improve Lives" P&G hopes to distribute 50 million liters of water to areas of need. According to news releases on the program's website, "PUR Purifier of Water is engineered to be a mini-water treatment plant in a packet. The product removes dirt, cysts, and pollutants, and kills bacteria and viruses in contaminated water."

On the surface, this appears to be a very noble and worthy cause and, of course, it is. Access to clean water is a huge problem in many developing nations and water-borne diseases result in the death of millions of children and adults each year. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2006 Summary, over 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.

But what are the problems inherent with this campaign? Well, to begin, PUR water purifier packet donations do not result in a long-term solution for these areas. Once the packets run out, these individuals are left with the same dirty water full of "worms, bacteria and germs". So, while they are undoubtedly providing a much needed resource in the short-term, it is not a very viable long-term solution for these communities.

What does Procter & Gamble have to gain from their donations? A lot of very good publicity as well as encouraging consumers to purchase their products when they otherwise might not. Additionally, they are, in effect, tapping into a huge market in these countries. Under the Live, Learn and Thrive Initiative, P&G has been selling their PUR water filtration packets at cost to not-for-profit and humanitarian groups for use in the developing world. If they hook aid agencies and local governments into purchasing packets of PUR for a short-term fix rather than investing in infrastructure to provide long-term water solutions for these communities, it could turn into a very large financial gain for the company down the road.

From a consumer or citizen perspective, if you are concerned about the lack of clean water in these communities, you can donate money to organizations that concentrate on providing long-lasting solutions, such as H20 Africa, Water Aid or Charity Water, who fund projects that include the installation and rehabilitation of freshwater systems by digging wells and training local water committees. Granted, it's not as easy as buying a bottle of Tide detergent, but it will have a lot longer lasting impact.