Water conservation

This initial post is intended to pertain to water conservation, but political questions are likely unavoidable if we are to use this thread for on-going in-depth discourse. A key political question is the extent to which access to safe water is a human right, as opposed to a commodity.

But as for local efforts at conservation, numbers probably vary according to what type of washing machine one has, as well as other factors. But to use myself as the example I know best so far, a rough estimate is that I’m saving about 1,500 gallons per year by using the grey water from the washing machine to flush solids down the toilet.

That estimated amount does not include what gets saved by using an out-of-doors bucket and then dumping the urine on various parts of the gravel driveway of the property I co-rent with two other people. Anyone else here doing that ? I got hip to it when I visited a farmer in Union County.

A friend drank her own urine as medicine. Anyone here try that ? I’ve not. There was a guy at the long-closed gay bar, The Eagle, who would approach men, asking to drink their pee. Also, in 1986 when I obsessively washed my hands until they were raw and bleeding, the older lady next door kindly suggested I pee on them as a remedy. “But don’t tell anyone, because then they’ll REALLY think you’re crazy.” (EDIT: The cracked, bleeding hands were due to a dish washer job I had when I was 18, not excessive hand washing, though I was plenty obsessive-compulsive about other things at the time.)

But as for peeing on gravel, the liquid drains well enough below the surface to prevent the nitrogen molecules from bonding with oxygen and forming ammonia. I know folk who use diluted urine to add nitrogen to their garden soil, but haven’t done that yet. Some day society will have gone sane enough so that peeing on someone’s grave (in which their dead body has composted instead of being pumped full of toxics) will be a show of respect.

But as for grey water, if we factor in the additional amount saved by capturing what we use while brushing our teeth, washing hands, and showering, we might conservatively estimate the yearly water conservation amount to be 2,500 gallons per year, per person.

Imagine how much water a household of four people could conserve, such as two adults and two children or teenagers. That amount could be 4,000 gallons of water saved per year, according to my very rough estimates.

Imagine 100 households doing it. That’s an estimated 400,000 gallons of treated water saved, probably even if they continue to pee in the their bathrooms, because they’ll probably have plenty of grey water for flushing, especially if they don’t use it on their property for non-edibles.

Imagine a thousand households doing it : that’s approximately 4,000,000 gallons of treated water saved per year. You can crunch some numbers yourself and correct this. I’ll be glad (that’s not a typo for galled ) to hear from you.

One problem could be having too much grey water. I’m still inquiring into the question of using grey water on my garden. Some cite concerns about bodily materials getting too near edible plants, while others say that health concerns about, for example, a fecal fleck here and there or a bit of menstrual blood here and there are overblown.

One option might be to use grey water just for non-edibles, such as flowers, that beautify the garden and draw beneficial insects. Grey water makes more sense, of course, when we’re using dish soap, bath soap, toothpaste, shampoo, cleaning agents, and laundry soap that are eco-friendly. Water conservation is a piece in the puzzle, related to other pursuits such as maximally organic gardening and farming, as well as maximally veganic living.

Several thousand water lovists doesn’t seem preposterous in a city with more than 800,000 people, does it ? Further, how could it not make sense to consider the amount of water-related ecological gain if, for example, 10,0000 households engaged in rigorous water conservation, in a nation of more than 300,000,000 people? And that’s just the US.

These rough estimates don’t even factor in rain barrels. As for why you might care, there is probably plenty of data available online or in libraries about: (1) how water conservation pertains to the amount of energy and other resources it takes to treat water and pump it to end-users; as well as (2) the energy demands and ecological effects of the water that flows from households into sewage systems, a significant amount of which makes its way into rivers, streams, and lakes.

One detail is keeping food residue-rich water from adding to the nutrients in waterways. Pouring some of that water on compost piles might be ok, but there is the concern about washing away nutrients and otherwise detracting from the compost process.

Like much else, it’s a work-in-progress. It might be ecologically sound and personally sane to strain out the food residues from kitchen grey water, so it doesn’t add nutrients to the sewage system when flushed down the toilet, nor risk drawing rodents when poured on parts of the garden.

As for composting, many of us living in cities and suburbs cannot responsibly, let alone legally, use waterless toilets for humanure. But there is a lot we can be doing to use water more wisely with little extra effort and little to no extra money spent. Public officials and businesses could promote water-wisdom, in ways not entirely different from how some of them have been encouraging cycling or gardening.

My own opinion is that water conservation is a moral issue. What’s yours ? As with other things upon which our lives depend, such as food, shelter, or medicine, there is the political question of how we allocate this life-enabling and quality-of-life-enabling compound.

To what extent should access to safe water be (1) a human right, as part of the natural commons that no one can legitimately own and control; as opposed to being (2) a commodity denied to those unable to pay for it?