Group items tagged

Only Looks Like a Tempest when You're in the Teapot > Bad news: > Greywater reuse offers much more benefits than are realized > in most systems. > Good news: > Even the worst shortfalls in greywater design rarely cause > actual harm, and for the few that do, it's not much. > For every hundred greywater users in the US, probably 15 are achieving most > of the benefit they should, eighty-some could do better, and a few systems have > overall negative net benefit. > Of these, most have an overbuilt system—the problem is that the ecological > cost of the pumps and pipe are greater than the saved water. > Perhaps one greywater user in a thousand is discharging diaper greywater directly > to a water way, which is about the only way you can create a significant health > hazard. Almost all such systems date from a time when the ecosystem was much > bigger and the human imprint much smaller. > There has not been one documented case of greywater transmitted illness > in the US. > In our area, we have curbside recycling of mixed recyclables as well as trash > pick up. > I've observed that well-meaning citizens put plenty of stuff which looks vaguely > recyclable but is not in their recycling bins (e.g., polystyrene packing), as > well as totally recyclable materials in in a form which is impractical to recycle, > like thousands of bits of loose paper, broken glass, and specs of plastic. At > the sorting facility, they send this sort of stuff to the landfill. > For some households, the percentage of their recyclables which are actually > recycled is as low as 20%, though it could be 95% with good information. This > does not mean recycling is dangerous or illegal. > This is a totally different kind of "failure" than, say, burning > PVC in the backyard (which forms clouds of carcinogenic dioxin). These folks > just need to know what they're doing wrong, and how to do it better. > The aim of this web page is to share with greywater users and regulators > what they're doing wrong. The aim of our > greywater > books > is to detail how to do it better. > Please bear in mind as you read the exhaustive litany of "problems" > that even the most pathetically misguided attempts at greywater reuse still > wind up showing some net benefit relative to the alternatives. > Here's an overview of the failure of greywater reuse to achieve more of the > benefit which it easily could: > Most new complex grey water reuse systems are > abandoned, most simple ones achieve less than 10% irrigation efficiency within > five years. > If grey water treatment systems were built according > to overdone legal requirements, many would consume so much energy and materials > to save so little water that the Earth would be better off if the water were > just wasted instead. > Claims made for packaged grey water filtration > systems are often inflated. Some are very expensive and many don't work. > Some also have the preceding problem. > The majority of successful grey water recycling > systems are so simple and inexpensive they are beneath recognition by regulators, > manufacturers, consultants, and salespeople. > A web search on "grey water" "greywater" > "gray water" or "graywater" will yield hundreds examples > of the errors below. Many are designs from the early 70's, reprinted on the > web as cutting edge, despite having been discredited in the field for twenty > years. >