Main Feature
Is Wastewater Recycling the answer to water poverty?
Written by Ian Clarke
ian@nodogmedia.co.uk
Increasingly around the world we as news consumers are hearing more and more that water (particularly drinking water), that most precious commodity for a lifeform that relies on it, is becoming scarcer.
We have all seen or heard at one time or another of that little ditty about how much of the water on the planet is available to us as water that is available for treatment into drinking water. For those that have not it runs roughly like this, 97% of all water is saline in the oceans and seas. About 2.5% is fresh water, but this includes in the region of 2% as water frozen in glaciers, ice and snow. Then there is about 0.5% to 0.75% as fresh groundwater and soil moisture, with finally less than 0.01% of it as surface water located in lakes, swamps and rivers. We as humans tap into these sources to provide the raw water for all our needs including drinking water.
So, even as the human population rises, the amount of water that is available to sustain that population remains about the same or to put it another way, the available water per head is falling. This means that we have to find methods of using that which is available in far more efficient and sustainable ways and of re- utilising the water which we do use to maximise
4 drain TRADER | April 2018 | availability.
In developed countries for decades, if not centuries, providing water for human use has been achieved by taking raw water from the environment, treating it, then using it for drinking, washing (ourselves and clothes and cars etc.), flushing our waste away (sewage), watering crops and sustaining our livestock and then putting the used water into wastewater collection systems where it is treated, cleaned and the resulting cleaned water being put back into the environment in rivers streams or sea outfalls or simply passing water not collected via a sewer directly back into the environment (rivers etc.).
In less developed countries this process is often rather more basic with the water being taken from the environment and used directly and pumped, often untreated, into local water courses. However, as time goes on this option is being addressed where it can be, if only because of the impact on population health that putting untreated wastewater back into the environment can give rise to.
Whichever system is in use, this then relies on the natural water cycle to provide new clean water in the environment by way of evaporation, clouds, weather systems and rain to replenish the natural sources that are used by humans for extraction. This of course is something of a long and often unguaranteed way of getting raw water out of the environment, especially given the changes that are (for some arguably) occurring due to the global warming phenomenon (but that is a whole new argument we won’t touch on here).
The question is should we as a population be doing more to take some of the pressure off nature by recycling the water we use directly rather than simply placing it into the environment once used by us, sort of cutting out the ‘middle
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