h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This PDF illustrates the issue nicely. http://www.connectright.org.uk/documents/PDF%20Guidelines%20-%20Is%20your%20home%20connected%20right.pdf

Mind, does the wash off from washing a car, have the wsame impact as a heavy shower, after a period of dry, where all the built up exaust fumes, dust, car tyre matterial, oil drips, etc., on the roads get washed into the river in one big go?
I know, round here, when we hit a dry period in the summer (ha ha, OK, maybe a couple years ago this last happened), it is physically sick inducing walking outside in the streets round here, due to the stink and particulate matterial in the air, off of the pavements and mainly I guess the roads and then the 'cleaness' of the air and streets, following a huge downpour after such a dry period, when the rains cleaned all the muck off the streets, and taken it direct, I guess, into the river Cam
Mind, the one that always makes me laugh, in this road, and nearby, is the large speed bumps, they put in a few years ago, which are also designated 'crossing points', (they've got the bobbly pavement bits either side of them).
The cars always slow down, (well useually), when going over them, and I'm not sure if its deasils that are more likely to do this; but right on the top of the 'bumps', its always really* really* slippary, if its not rained; I think from oil, which drips off eitehr the exaust or the bottom of the car, as it slows to pass over...

Mind, returning to water, and waste thereof, near me, the three nearest pubs which I use (all within a couple mintues walk), all have large, old fashioned err, whatever they're called, things, above the urinals, into which the water drip drip drips, and once full (no doubt on a mechanical ballcock mechanism), they flush the urinals. Each of these pubs, has a very* large container, at the top on the wall, containing the water, must be two, or three times an old fashioned size toilet at home ersion of the same... so I'm guessing maybe 90 litres or more?
And, they flush all night, and all day.... as I did question two fo the pubs concerned, just chatting to the landlords, and they'd neither even considered if it were possible to turn it off overnight, when the pub wasn't open I think they seem to flush say every ten to fifteen minutes, say, half an hour, on the outside, at 90 litres a time, over 24 hours,
*does mental maths, then does saine maths*
12960 litres per day, for all three pubs, if flushing 90 litres a time, t twice an hour, in each pub, for 24 hours maybe 90 litres is a bit high.... but I can't remember how many litres the old flush systems on the older style home loos were...

5760 litres per day, the same, but taking 40 litres per 'flush'.... still quite a bit, without considering the glass washers, kitchens etc., at each pub, and of course, I assume there is some water usage in the female loos at each pub too
add to that the
*counts*
five resturants/takeaways, and three cafes, between me and these pubs, and I'd imagine they absolutely drown out any contibution to gross water usage in this area, from the flats and houses Oh, and then the two community centre type places, I think they have cafe type things in them, plus one assumes toilets etc hmmm... actually I mgiht have missed a takeaway or two and/or cafe off that list, the commercial property here seems rather dynamic and changing
Mind, I've had three litres of coffee this morning so far, plus four or five pints of water, and washed up by hand a couple of times, and *thinks* flushed the loo a few times too, today, and lodger showered earlier, before he went out... so it all adds up, but there isn't necessarily anything that can be done about a lot of the usage, and I'd guess it'd cost tens of thousands of pounds, to plumb a 'gray' water system, into a house like this, even just from the front door area, let alone the actual supply to reach the street/property outside...

In other words, we only actually drink a tiny tiny tiny fraction of all the water which has to be cleaned and disinfected to drinking water standards. Hmmm, maybe some countries have the right idea when they just don't bother treating the water that flows from the taps. If you want to drink clean water, buy it directly in bottles.

The ironic thing being that millions of people ignore the high quality, expensively treated stuff that comes out their taps and instead buy low quality untreated bacteria-laden mineral water with posh labels on them. Isn't marketing amazingly efficient?

A great amount of water is lost, too, as we wait for our shower water to reach a tolerable temperature. This system claims to save 40 gallons per household per day: http://www.taco-hvac.com/uploads/FileLibrary/100-15.pdf

A recent (Spanish) invention uses a simpler method that directs the (still cold) water from the shower to the toilet cistern, until a predetermined temperature is reached. One could always fill a bucket instead, of course.

Veering slightly away from the subject, is anyone as confused as I am about the claim that we could 'run out' of water? Given the increase of evaporation due to global warming and thus an increase in precipitation, isn't that strictly a local problem rather than a global one? (Since I live in a rain forest my view may be skewed).

Locally the city trucks have adverts to drink tap water to offset the sale of bottled water, something that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. The tap water has always been plentiful and excellent and the bottled water as well. What changed?

Ach! all this self flagellation..I might as well stop living as I'm such a wasteful individual..

"fter a period of dry, where all the built up exaust fumes, dust, car tyre matterial, oil drips, etc., on the roads get washed into the river in one big go?"

Councils should according to best practice, be retro-fitting (and installing alongside new developments) SUDs alongside major roads to capture these pollutants. SUDs are Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems which include;
buffer strips of gently sloping grass to filter out contaminants before they enter rivers, retention ponds where water sits for a few days to allow bigger contaminants to settle out, reed beds and other plantations which filter out nasty stuff as it flows away from roads.

Chances are your road has some of these technologies in place and you don't know it. SUDs are very hard to spot to the untrained eye

http://www.susdrain.org/

It's not so much that the planet will ever run out of water, it's more about having enough of the right stuff in the right place at the right time. Also only around 1% of global water is fresh water, i.e not salty. So it's non-sea water that we can actually run out of if we abstract too much.

That's what I meant. There will always be fresh water in the form of precipitation, more so now due to global warming. Just as it would be ill advised to build a city in the Sahara, limiting consumption in a rain forest is a bit strange.

And monetising water in that same rainforest is bizarre.

Exactly... as I said earlier, water isn't in shortage, its just it isn't necessarily always where it needs to be, in the correct form...

If even in a country, relatively rich like the UK, we can't convince the share holders of our water companys to put in a pipe from the North to the South, there seems little hope, ever of sense winning out over the investors interest in the opperations of how it all works...

Again, what on earth would be the point of one worrying over the little bit of wastage of water, whilst the shower warms up, in the house, as it is an inconsequential amount of water, in comparason to the leaks in teh pipes of the water companys themselves, and, as it would appear, compaired to the continual flushign of the urinals in the pubs nearby...

hmmm.... make tap water 'gray', and insist we all buy bottled water... Wouldn't work. many people are far distant from shops, some people, believe it or not, don't, or can't drive, even home delivery of grocerys from supermarkets, limit the amount of bottled water they'll deliver. Some houses/flats, are, too small for vast storage of drinking water, and sufficient water for cleaning clothes etc. Why not just ban the production of and sale of 'fizzy drinks' instead, I'm sure the liquid bit in them must be water

Changing the way in which, every person lives, and does everyday actions, is not always necessarily a logical and sensible way to change things, as for the recent recycling fad in the UK, it is too illogical to make sense, why make millions and millions of people change their daily routeen and habbits, to little, or negledgable benifical effect, rather than making a comparatively small number of manafacturers and producers, alter a small number of easily controlled and regulated aspects of the way they produce and package their produce?
What was the ecological effect of the millions and millions of plastic boxes and one, or two, extra wheelie bins, manfactured for each household up and down the country, in order to do recycling? Especialy when, as far as I can tell, most waste isn't recycled anyhow, despite the extra dust-carts that now have to come up and down the streets every week in order to collect these boxes and their contents Its all too variable across differnt parts of the country too, which also just suggests a random set of implications of half-baked ill throught-through ideas about 'doing good', rather than well throught-through, calculated and proven ideas and methods, that would otherwise one would hope have some scientific and mathmatically significent backing behind its implimentation

That's as maybe but the cold hard fact is that we are running out/have run out of suitable big holes to put our waste into. That combined with big fines (paid from your council tax) from Europe for every extra tonne of waste that goes to landfill over an ever-decreasing allowance, means that recycling is not and cannot be a temporary fad. It's here to stay. Though, hopefully in better thought out and consistent ways.

I once questioned on here the wisdom of producing a glass bottle or jar once, filling it, sending it to the consumer, who then sends it off to be melted down and rebuilt again What seemed far more logical to me was that we would all buy and own a limited number of glass and plastic containers suitable for a variety of purposes from holding hair gel to soft drinks to children's toys. We would then refill these containers at super markets from dispensers.

There are 101 reasons why this wouldn't work, but they are almost all commercial/marketing/corporate profit related reasons. There is no real practical reason why this could not work, thus wiping out the entire wasteful packaging industry.

Known variously as “Plasma gasification,” “plasma technology,” “Plasma Thermal Destruction & Recovery,” etc. in simple terms it breaks down all molecular bonds and reduces [waste] material to elemental gases, metals, and glasses [metalloids]. This is NOT burning trash which only oxidizes existing molecules producing different molecules.

In resent history the Industrial Revolution provided many new products, many of then in great quantities. In general, humanity took natural resources and energy and created mass produced products. To stimulate sales, a plan of obsolescence was embraced. Today we send vast amounts of waste to landfills.

This system of delivering product for profits is irreparability part of our life. Even if we wanted to change it, change would be stressful to society. By adding plasma recycling to the picture, we complete the cycle started by the Industrial Revolution.

Raw materials plus energy produces products. Products become waste. Waste plus plasma recycling produces raw materials and energy. Perhaps in the real world this cycle is not perfect, but does offer a real alternative to dumping waste and burning more coal for power.

The golden idea here is that it can readily transition into our existing economy. It will produce [recover] pure metals, syngas for power, heat, and construction materials like cinder blocks or gravel. While performing this miraculous feat it also lowers the carbon footprint. The down side [if there is one] is the high start up costs that can be recouped in a matter of only a few years. Oh, bye the way, it makes new jobs as well.

Why is this not headline news?
http://www.pyrogenesis.com/site-en.html
http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file33251.pdf
http://www.peat.com/
http://advancedplasmapower.com/

"Again, what on earth would be the point of one worrying over the little bit of wastage of water, whilst the shower warms up, in the house, as it is an inconsequential amount of water, in comparason to the leaks in teh pipes of the water companys themselves"

I can't vouch for the accuracy of these figures, but this is what I've found so far:

"UK water companies lose a combined total of 3.3 billion litres every day" http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2012/03/drought_2012.html

That amounts to a total waste of roughly 726 million gallons daily.

The system mentioned in post 25 is claimed to save some 40 gallons per day for each of the 24 million UK households.

That amounts to 960 million gallons daily... in addition to the amount lost through leaking pipes.

The water itself won't run out, in northern Europe at least.
But the purification uses energy, which comes from somewhere - gas/oil/coal to electricity, and also chemicals for purification. All that probably impacts more on the environment as a whole, than just the water supply.
And yes, it's bad that the leaks are there, of course. And those should be fixed.
But waste is still waste, and if you can stop it, why not?

Here in the driest continent on Earth we know a thing or two about conserving water and conversely our agricultural industries are the biggest users of water and the conflict between domestic users needs and agriculture's wants is an almost permanent state of warfare between the States with the Commonwealth trying to be all things to all of the states.

In our last big Australia wide drought bought on by the El Nino weather pattern our major cities water catchment dams dropped perilously low, so low that Sydney and Melbourne went ahead and built enormous desalination plants at costs exceeding many billions of dollars and these plants consume huge amounts of electricity to operate...when they are actually operating that is as the Big Sydney plant has been sold off to private industry and then was turned off, shut down on July 1 this year and wont be opened again until the dam levels fall below a certain capacity.

El Nino departed and La Nina arrived with all her bountiful wetness and two years of record rainfalls and huge floods ensued and now she's departed again and El Nino is back with his drying winds and parsimonious drops of rain; it's a cycle.

The results of all this weather activity is that we have been forced by circumstance and legislated by governments at all levels to save water. All new houses have to have a water catchment storage ability and that means water tanks and pipes plumbed to use captured stormwater for flushing of toilets and washing duties in the laundry. We have shower roses that reduce usage and wastage.
Hot water systems and lagged pipe systems with heat reservoirs that deliver heat to the tap or shower or bath with minimal wastage of cold water. Dual flush systems in toilets and quite a few other things as well.

The impact of all these happenings is that we the consumer are much more savvy about conserving water and as individuals we have managed to change the amount of water departing our dams and reservoirs significantly. I don't have the figures at hand(I could find them) but it is quite significant the drop, the permanent drop in household usage that's occurred and that's a great thing.

So yes individuals can play a role in water conservation that has tangible benefits that in some cases has led to reduction in water restrictions but yet there hasn't been a rise in water usage as people learn to use their water wisely as I know I do.

Partly in contrast and partly in common with Keith Miller (who lives on our West Island), we in North Canterbury NZ, live in what is traditionally a dry area (some call it semi-desert - which is perhaps a touch overstated) but there's no shortage of fresh water.
There are apparently several thousand wells extracting from the aquifers, fed from the Western Alps and much of it is used for agricultural irrigation.

If you were to drive the 30-odd km (20miles) Rangiora to Oxford on a dryish day, a quarter or more of that road would be lined with paddocks with those great irrigation trolleys, some lines of which are well over 100m long and all squirting copious amounts - and that's just the bits adjacent to the road.
Traditionally there has been no problem but, recently, concerns are being raised and farmers asked to be a little more careful (switch the damn things off in the evening).

A side issue is that the ground doesn't absorb all that water, so that noticeable amounts, say some, are seeping down back to the aquifers.
Add to that the fact that much of the irrigation is for livestock - and a high proportion of cattle - and more than a few people are getting concerned.

[The tapwater here (Rangiora) has been treated for a few years, as a safety measure. Nevertheless, there's lobbying afoot to stop treating it with chlorine (!)]



I think what I'm trying to say is that even here, with enviously copious supplies of very high quality fresh water, the good days are receding into the past.


(no attempt at a comment on what any effect of reduced aquifer outflow at the ocean may have on the environment)

>> Here in the driest continent on Earth we know a thing
or two about conserving water.. <<


Thank you Keith for your synopsis of the situation in Oz.
Hopefully the lessons learned there can be happily exported
to other continents as the occasion arises. As it will, much
sooner than most expect or are willing to admit.

I note with sadness that many large and famous rivers (Jordan,
Los Angeles, etc) around the whirled no longer reach the oceans,
and that the one huge aquafer that lies under the western US
is being depleted so that 300 foot wells are now 900 foot wells,
and the glaciers that feed three major rivers flowing through
Pakistan and India are predicted to be gone in 20 years.


~jwf~