How green can we be with water?

Do we really, truly care about conserving gasoline, water, electricity? How serious are we about recycling? Are we as green as we want to be? Are we as green as we think we are? Can we even be green as we want with our water?

"Water is the driving force of all nature."
Leonardo da Vinci

This is a continuing series into the exploration of just how concerned we are about caring for our environment when it comes to our personal comforts.

In the previous issue I explored the recycling game and how we abuse the redistribution of useable items. This issue covers the necessary use of water vs. the wasteful use of water and just how safe our water really is.

We toss a few items into the recycle bin, our conscience is tested at the grocery store when asked “paper or plastic?”, we trade our incandescent light bulbs for energy efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs or LED’s, yet we buy our water in non-degradable plastic bottles by the caseload. Are we just environmentally confused or are we fooling ourselves into thinking we are environmentally friendly? We take energy conservation seriously only around the time we pay our monthly bills. Or do we? Water usage is another resource that we continually use more of than we need to. Gasoline is the other. The difference with water is that it is a renewable resource and gasoline is not.

Water is necessary for the life of every living thing on this planet. We need it to keep our lawns green, to flush toxins out of our bodies, to rid our homes of our bodily waste, to cleanse ourselves, to keep our cars and nuclear power plants running cool, and for recreation.

This resource is finite, in that we cannot create more of it. It has been used over and over in countless billions of cycles, from ocean to clouds to rain to lakes to man-made water filtering systems to our homes to sewer drains to man-made sewage treatment systems and eventually back to the ocean. When man took his first drink of water and then peed it back out onto the ground, he became a part of that cycle and we have been striving to improve the system ever since. Only after our demand for usage of water increased to the point where Earth’s natural filtration system, earth itself, was not cleaning it up well enough before it got back to us to drink again did we realize the necessity to clean it up ourselves and to not pollute it.

Yet we continually find evidence that not all of us are doing our part in keeping it clean.

A recent Associated Press investigation found a vast array of pharmaceuticals contaminate the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

Last month, March 2008, Los Angeles shared the honor, with Clearbrook, British Columbia, as having the best tasting water in an annual international contest and yet Los Angeles is on the list of cities where the pharmaceuticals were found. With contradictions like this how can we trust what anyone tells us about our drinking water?

Clean and tasteful are relative terms.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

From this admission it can be concluded that they think the general public is too undereducated to handle the truth and therefore we should remain ignorant.

We live in the information age and yet not all information is readily available to us until a news story spins the facts to appear more sensational than they should be. Then we panic. But only briefly, because after realizing there is very little we can do, we do nothing. Life goes on and we buy more bottled water and lose a little more faith in those who are paid to protect us and those who are supposed to report facts to us.

How much water is available to us?

Water parks, golf courses, residential use, food production, and the booming bottled water industry are putting a very large demand on our water resources. And every year we spend billions of dollars to clean it, to transport it, and to distribute it to where we can use it.

Of all the water this Earth has to offer, an estimated 13.6 billion cubic kilometers (including the oceans and polar ice caps), only 3% is useable freshwater. And rainfall runs off too quickly for efficient use.

Water pollution is a persistent, barely manageable problem, more so in third world countries, but it occurs in every country. Pollution of rivers and lakes reduces accessible freshwater supplies. Each year roughly 450 cubic kilometers of wastewater are discharged into rivers, streams and lakes. To dilute and transport this dirty water before it can be used again, another 6,000 cubic kilometers of clean water are needed - an amount equal to about two-thirds of the world's total annual useable fresh water runoff.

How much do we need?

The amount of water that people use depends on basic needs and how much water is available. Withdrawals of water have grown to meet demand for all types of use - for irrigated agriculture, industry, and municipal (household) purposes. As the world continues to urbanize at rapid rates, the demand for potable water for municipal use is expected to soar, out pacing the capacity of most cities to provide it.

Population growth, globally, is nearly 80 million per year which translates to an increased demand for freshwater of about 64 billion cubic meters a year - an amount equivalent to the entire annual flow rate of the Rhine River.

In 1995, 31 countries, home to nearly half a billion people, regularly faced either water stress or water scarcity. In 2025, 48 countries containing about 3 billion people will face water shortages. By 2050 the figures will be 54 countries containing 4 billion people, or 40 per cent of the projected world population of 9.4 billion.

A substantial portion of the total freshwater supply is needed to sustain marshes, rivers, coastal wetlands, and the millions of species they shelter. As humanity withdraws a growing share of all available freshwater, less is available to maintain these vital wetland ecosystems. Already, over 20 per cent of the approximately 10,000 freshwater fish species in the world are either endangered, threatened or going extinct.

Are we wasteful with our water?

Freshwater mismanagement has created deserts, poisoned millions of acres of land with salt and killed entire lakes (see the Aral Sea disaster).

We are experiencing floods where there never used to be floods. We are experiencing droughts where there never use to be droughts. Are these ‘unnatural’ occurrences due to how we use our water? Building a dam cannot help but alter the environment both upstream and downstream. But are we destroying the environment by doing so?

The way in which we use water to distribute fertilizer and pesticide to our food crop is not necessarily wasting water. After all using the water to produce food cannot be considered wasteful. In fact, since water is a renewable resource, meaning it all gets recycled and we use it over and over countless times, are we truly ‘wasting’ water when we use it?

You can argue that we overspend for the use of water when we look closely at how much water we use in our daily lives. Maybe we don’t need to leave the water running while we brush our teeth, or maybe we take a little longer than necessary in the shower. But are we truly wasting water? It is more accurate to say that we are wasting money.

We abuse water when we throw garbage in our rivers instead of disposing of it in a proper manner. It can be considered wasteful when we take into account the amount of water used to keep a golf course green compared to the number of people who use that golf course and then take into account the amount of water needed to keep a city park clean compared to the number of people who use that park. But in the end, all of the water we use to support golf courses and parks returns to the Earth and is then returned to us to use as we see fit.

I have to confess to allowing tap water run a little too long when I am hand washing pots and pans and when I brush my teeth, etc. These are habits that I am ashamed of but am consciously trying to change.

I don’t use automatic car washes anymore, opting to wash my cars by hand and not as often as I used to. I throw the soapy water on the lawn so the water soaks into the ground instead of down storm drains where it has to be filtered and cleaned. The soap does not harm the grass. Rinsing the car off does send soapy water down the street gutter but I don’t feel I am using as much as an automatic car wash.

How many of us have a dripping faucet that we plan on getting around to fixing some day? Did you know that a faucet dripping just 2 drops per minute can amount to almost nine gallons a month! How many drops of water is coming out of that dripping faucet per minute? In most cases it is a matter of replacing a washer that costs less than one dollar!

Cost of bottled water

I buy bottled water from Costco. I am only mildly ashamed of this fact. My city government has, in the past twelve months, issued three notices about our drinking water. Each notice informed us, 4 months after the contamination, that routine testing had revealed coliform bacteria contamination. Lovely. So, for two very obvious reasons, one being that the bacteria was found, and two, that it took so long for us to be notified, I drink bottled water. FYI, coliform bacteria is used as an indicator of the presence of other pathogenic organisms of fecal origin. Fecal pathogens include bacteria, viruses, protozoa or parasites. In those notices, we were never told what those other pathogens were.

In my family’s case, it is far cheaper for me to purchase bottled water than to take the chance of getting sick.

I learned of another expense of recycling plastic that, while not exactly money out of pocket, still costs tons in wasted water used in cleaning the plastic. During the process of recycling plastic, a variety of harmful acids and detergents are added to the water to separate the labels and glue from the plastic. Deflocculants are then added to pull the solids out of the wastewater. Finally, the wastewater is treated with chemicals to balance the pH level of the water. This process leaves the plastic sanitized and ready to be recycled. Annually, approximately 40 million gallons of wastewater, complete with harmful detergents, chemicals, acids, bases, deflocculants, and contaminants are flushed down the drain and back into our fresh water supply. This system is considered a lesser evil than creating plastic from scratch.

After decades of countless billions of gallons of contaminated water being introduced to our water tables, a new process of preparing plastic to be recycled has been discovered by ECO2 Plastics. Using a biodegradable organic solvent made of sugar beets and corn (in conjunction with liquid CO2). In the entire process now uses no water or harmful chemicals, and the liquid CO2 is distilled and used over and over again, as is the solvent.

Is there more we can do keep our water clean? Is there more we can do to use our water more efficiently? The answer is yes to both of these questions.

We use water to make money, we use it to make other products that make us money, we use it to keep ourselves healthy, doesn’t it make sense to take better care of it?

Since we cannot stop using water let’s think more intelligently about what we put in it.

This is part of a continuing series that explores just how dedicated we are to saving our planet and ourselves from our polluting and energy-wasting ways.

Come back for the next installment when I explore our use of electricity.

And, as always, please feel free to leave comments.

Sources:

Peopleandplanet.net

Bnet business network

EPA Ground Water & Drinking Water frequently asked questions