Comments on: Water, Carbon Emissions and Mind Training

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:29:46 +0000

Rob, as mentioned above we know a bit about water saving in Australia, so you might like to look at Sydney Water the web site for Sydney's water suppliers. Have a look at some of our plumbing suppliers too eg Caroma, most of their toilets use 4.5 litres. A Sydney couple converted their terrace house so that it was independent of the mains water and sewer, read about it in Sustainable house: living for our future by Michael Mobbs ISBN 094727748X.

By: Josef Davies-Coates

Josef Davies-Coates — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:54:17 +0000

One of the homes they've visited on Peak Moment TV simply didn't have the kitchen sink plumbed in at all but with a bucket underneath.

By: Louise

Louise — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:01:47 +0000

Good idea about the watering can. I’ve been wondering what I should be doing about the not-so-hot water I’ve been watching going down the plughole.
What to do with the water post-summer when the garden really doesn’t need any more watering though?
I can’t see that using it to flush toilets is really going to work for us in practice (too much effort to lug upstairs). We’ve vaguely pondered a grey water system but can’t see the benefits at the moment & don’t have much space. Is it possible to set up a system that takes grey water if it’s available, & tap water if it isn’t? After toilets, the biggest water use has got to be the washing machine, but I’d want it to use grey water only for the initial stages & a clean water rinse at the end. I don’t know if such systems / machines exist.

By: Harriet Stewart-Jones

Harriet Stewart-Jones — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:03:49 +0000

Hmm, you’ve lost me there guys (Klaus and Ben). There’s a lot I’d do for the planet but an icy cold shower on a winter morning? I don’t think so!

By: David

David — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:51:24 +0000

Thanks, Rob, for this piece. It resparked a debate we've been having on the CRAGs forum (http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/fora/threads/water-usage). We've done some digging into the figures, and here's what we've come up with (see the thread for more detail).

Typical carbon emissions per person for water use (UK, 2006/7) would be:

Supply: 20 kgCO2eq/person/yr
Sewage: 35 kgCO2eq/person/yr
Infrastructure = 73 kgCO2eq/person/yr (this seems high??! not clear what it includes)
Road Transport = 2.2 kgCO2eq/person/yr

Grand total = 130 kgCO2eq/person/year or 2.4% of a typical briton's footprint (of 5.4t).

So a pretty small proportion of your overall footprint, and certainly not a priority compared to electricity (16%), gas (27%), petrol (19%) & flights (34%). But once you've shrunk towards 1 or 2 t overall, it is certainly worth doing.

However, we must remember, of course, that water’s a precious resource that will be under pressure from climate change (in this country?). The same report shows shocking levels of waste - 25% of all supply!

By: Ben Brangwyn

Ben Brangwyn — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:08:59 +0000

A 45 second cold blast from an electric shower on half power delivers about 3 litres of water - plenty for soaping up and rinsing. It's way less than a bucketful, and as Klaus says, very envigorating on a winter's morning. The side benefit is that it builds personal resilience - when I'm in my cold shower mode, I almost never get ill.

Now, if I had a glorious mane of flowing locks, I doubt 45 seconds would do it.

Shave your head for the planet!

By: Neil L

Neil L — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:37:25 +0000

And in the same eNews…

SMF – the Social Market Foundation – has just published a report looking at whether people can change their behaviour and based on successful case studies what effort has been made to apply these insights in policymaking. The study has looked at a wide range of examples from across the international public policy spectrum to better understand the drivers behind people’s choices and behaviour, and distilled the messages into a tool for policymakers to improve the future development and design of policy solutions.

Download the report from http://www.smf.co.uk/

By: Neil L

Neil L — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:30:30 +0000

Came across this in an eNews that I get sent...

The other footprint: the water footprint

By now, you've all heard of the Carbon Footprint - the measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Today, KGG sheds light on the other foot; Your Water Footprint. http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36808 ENN http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/36808 reports that the Water footprint of an individual is defined as the total water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the individual. It can be estimated by multiplying all goods and services consumed by their respective virtual-water content.

The water footprint of a nation shows the total volume of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. The water footprint consists of two parts: Use of domestic water resources and use of water outside the borders of the country. The water footprint includes water withdrawn from surface and groundwater and the use of soil water (in agricultural production).

A Few Facts

The production of 1 kilogram of beef requires 16,000 liters of water. To produce 1 cup of coffee we need 140 liters of water. The water footprint of China is about 700 cubic meter per year per capita. Only 7% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside China. The USA water footprint is 2500 cubic meter per year per capita.

Coffee Case Study

Background - Coffee is, in dollar terms, the most important agricultural product traded in the world. Producing coffee requires a lot of water.

Objective - A case study performed by A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain was conducted to calculate the volumes of water required to drink coffee and tea in the Netherlands.

Results - "We found that for drinking one standard cup of coffee in the Netherlands we need about 140 litres of water, by far the largest part for growing the coffee plant. A standard cup of coffee is 125 ml, which means that we need more than 1100 drops of water for producing one drop of coffee. Total coffee consumption in the Netherlands requires a total of 2.6 billion cubic metres of water per year, which is equal to 36% of the annual Meuse flow. The Dutch people account for 2.4% of the world coffee consumption. All together, the world population requires about 110 billion cubic metres of water per year in order to be able to drink coffee. This is equivalent to 15 times the annual Meuse runoff, or 1.5 times the annual Rhine runoff."?

What's Your Water Footprint?

If you're interested in finding out your individual water footprint, please use the extended calculator provided by

http://www.waterfootprint.org/

By: Klaus Harvey

Klaus Harvey — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:11:35 +0000

I started taking cold showers instead of hot to save energy and water. You don’t spend as long under a stream of cold water funnily enough. It’s much more refreshing than a hot one, so a great way to wake up in the mornings and very good for the circulation and digestion. Once you get past the initial shock (especially in winter) it’s fine. I think most of us have become a bit spoilt in the developed world with a seemingly endless supply of hot water on tap which we take for granted.

By: Jacky

Jacky — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:13:19 +0000

Here in Gloucestershire we had a taste of what it would be like to live without drinking water last year. The entire population of Gloucester & Cheltenham had no tapwater at all for over a week, and it was over 3 weeks before you could drink what came out of the taps. Drinking water came in bottles and water for the loo and everything else from bowsers on street corners. People just got used to managing with less.
And some people are still in caravans or temporary accommodation because their houses arent habitable yet.

By: Neil L

Neil L — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:59:05 +0000

You might want to contact Nicky Scott at the Devon Community Composting Network (http://www.dccn.org.uk) about the nitty gritty of composting your own poo – he recently won the Resource Publishing Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution to community waste management and enlightened us all about the benefits of humanure during his acceptance speech.

By: Joanne Poyourow

Joanne Poyourow — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:38:46 +0000

Hi Rob –
Here in Southern California 19% of our state’s electricity useage goes toward pumping and
processing water. Yes, 19%, I got the stat from the water company. And much of our state’s electricity is generated by coal. So saving water is definitely a global warming mitigation measure around here!
I had to laugh that Jane had just heard the yellow/mellow rhyme – it was around in the drought of the 1970s here. You mention Liquid Gold in your Transition Handbook – I have heard it is a wonderful plant fertilizer, and we know from experience what a fantastic compost starter it is!
When I talk with people about water, I remind them that all the water saving measures that our water companies broadcasts are mere CONSERVATION measures: how to use a bit less. But you’re still using from the same source, which is so costly to our carbon emissions. It’s up to us renegades to challenge people to think about alternative SOURCES like rainwater harvesting and greywater.
With water–like so many things–we have developed a “use it once and send it away” attitude. But how many times can you use it before it eventually leaves your property? And does it need to leave via the sewer or septic tank, couldn’t it filter into groundwater basins beneath you through the soils beneath your trees, etc.
I realize your geography is a whole lot wetter than ours; here replenishing the groundwater basins is a big issue, because if we don’t – i.e. if we whisk all our rainwater away to the ocean – Southern California coastal cities are faced with seawater incursion of groundwater basins. If we don’t replenish our groundwater with storm water, we must import water from far away (with related carbon emissions) to be pumped into those basins to keep seawater out. Ah, the wonder of modern technology! Some local cities like Santa Monica, California, are wising up now, and requiring a certain % of hardscape on your property be permeable (sidewalks, driveways, etc), to cause rainwater to percolate back into those groundwater basins.
Greywater here is a whole other issue. It is technically illegal, so anyone doing it has to stay a bit covert. I can understand why it needs to be – when the general public doesn’t understand the difference between potable, greywater, and blackwater, they can so easily put the wrong thing in the wrong place, thus having a city authorize a gravity-fed greywater project at this point is pretty risky. But the public education must happen (it’s up to us), and meanwhile brave pioneers must test systems to find solutions that are simple, inexpensive, and easy to maintain (dare I raise my hand?).
My “Water Wisdom” resource collection: http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=249
Tracey mentioned “proper systems to flush the loo” — take a serious look at them. Many of those “proper systems” are not power-down because they require an electrical pump!
Don, my understanding is that human waste used uncomposted can perpetuate bacteria and diseases. (For the same reason we’re advised not to use greywater on the edible portions of our plants) The hot composting technique kills those pathogens off.
Does anyone have info on John Todd and his Living Machines for water filtration? These are on-site water cleansing ponds. I read about these in the first of the Bioneers books, but there seems to be little detail available on how to construct this kind of filtration, what plants (botanic names) are the work horses, how big the filtration area needs to be per volume of water, what needs to be at the floor of the pond, etc. If anyone has filtration pond resources to recommend I’d be interested in hearing of them.

By: Nicola Dobiecka

Nicola Dobiecka — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:44:02 +0000

Isn't it funny the things we do that are so inconsistent?

When I was staying with family in Australia I would happily save the shower run-off water and stand by the washing machine to siphon off the rinse water...

Back in the UK and it just doesn't seem to enter my head in the same way. I know we have to conserve water here too and I too can't brush my teeth with the tap running, yet I can pour clean water away when waiting for it to get hot so I can wash up!

Since reading your piece I've brought the watering can inside...

... and my boyfriend and I had a debate this morning (far too early for me, I wasn't making any sense) about how we wash - we're renting a place which doesn't have a shower so we fill a basin and sit in the bath and a have bucket wash.

It definitely uses less water than having a bath and we wondered if it might use less water than having a shower (depends on the shower type and duration of showering I imagine).

It definitely is another 'behaviour change' thing though.

By: Don Latter

Don Latter — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:16:01 +0000

In my part of Hong Kong we have septic tanks which we get emptied every year or so, and the man who empties them trundles the contents away and probably dumps(!)them in a bit of wasteland or uses them around his fruit trees. Less scrupulous residents get a jobseeker from over the border to empty their tanks and tell them to dump it – still in the black garden bags – along the path leading to my allotment. Thanks. What I’d like to know is how safe human excrement is for growing plants. The Rodale composting book says it’s best not to, if I remember rightly, because of the toxins in it, but others recommend using it after hot composting. It still gets used in these parts by the few people who still bother to grow things, as far as I can tell/smell, but probably without composting it. What’s the best thing to do?

By: molly

molly — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:11:51 +0000

You can buy a converter peice that takes the square end of the dowwnpipe and converts it to a round end to go to the tank (or vice versa)...at least in aussie you can, hopefully there too!

Blessings