There are two things this post is not going to cover today: Agricultural water consumption (measured in one of the awesomely non-standard unit of acre-feet) and the ALS icewater challenge. Instead, I am mostly going to focus on urban water usage and a little on industrial use. California is in one of the worsts droughts in recorded history and this fact has been widely publicized and acknowledged by politicians. Yet water is still treated as an incredibly cheap commodity and is used in painfully inane ways.

I’m a big fan of decentralizing the grid, and right now water often comes from a central source (in my case East Bay Municipal Utility District) which in turn pipes it from the Mokelumne River watershed. Water sourcing is compartmentalized in California, so its not like all of us will have our taps run dry a the same time. So lets go over some of the major major drains on the water system.

Two major themes regarding water waste are efficiency (low-flow showerheads, dualflush toilets, xerascaping) and conservancy (shower less frequently, turning off the tap when brushing/shaving). Conservancy often has a more behavioral component and can potentially run into issues with social norms. Efficiency is generally implemented with technology.

Toilets

This is an affront to anyone who doesn’t have access to clean water. Especially since the technology exists to take care of this. As a renter I somewhat bound to yellow be mellow, collecting unused shower water for flushing and displacing water in the toilet tank to reduce water consumed per flush. Unfortunately, the solution to this cause of wasted water has the tallest social hurdle to overcome: Composting toilets. From the most basic system (5 gallon bucket and sawdust) to fancy residential systems (e.g. Biolet), most people would rather not deal with more than a lever after dropping the kids off at the pool.

Shower

Water waste consciousness in the shower is a bit more in vogue, with fancy times, lights and gadgets to measure your usage. Low-flow showerheads exist to increase efficiency. To reduce the impact of showers further, simply using that resource less. I’ve found baking soda to be miraculous in odor control. Also, shower with a buddy.*

*Not scientifically proven. More data required.

Laundry

Washing machines have followed showers into the future with high-efficiency side-loading machines. I was hoping NASA would have made more progress with this issue but alas. Astronauts currently have limited options for dirty laundry, which are literally reuse, compost it or violent atmospheric re-entry. I’m hoping that silver nanoparticles, which have inhibitory effects on bacterial growth, could increase the period between washes for clothing items. Another practice I’ve yet to try out is freezing clothes to kill bacteria. WAT. I’ll try it with my gym clothes at work sometime.

Landscape

Here’s the elephant in the room. By many accounts responsible for up to 50 percent of residential water usage, conservancy efforts have focused on this facet of water waste. Landscaping is plagued by overwatering, evaporation and water intensive plants (looking at you grass). Unfortunately, your landscape has the strongest cultural ties to the American Dream and faces a lot of push-back when it comes to change. Homeowners associations don’t like brown lawns, fruit trees can attract pests, people love their lawn sports. I was playing croquet the other day, albeit on a pretty blighted lawn. Things get kind of subjective here: I’m okay with synthetic lawns if you need the comfort or practicality of that viridian carpet. Otherwise xerascaping (planting drought tolerant plants) or going with a victory garden (go allies!) with nice drip-tape to control water use. Just remember to water in the morning or evening (to prevent mid-day evaporation water loss).

Systemic Solutions

“Okay Timmy, your hand has been up this whole lecture. Whats on your mind?”, “GREY WATER!” shouts Timmy elatedly, nay, in fevered orgiastic ecstasy. Toilets(#1), showers, sinks and laundry can all feed into a grey water system which, depending on how much treatment can be recycled into toilets or landscape. The benefit is two-fold: First, this is water that won’t make it to the energetically intense sewage treatment plant and secondly, it prevents potable water from being wasted on the aforementioned uses. Implementing greywater systems can be tricky though. Lots of red tape at the bureaucracy level and some infrastructure at the plumbing level. It also takes some behavioral changes, such as buying biodegradable soaps, detergents, shampoos and anything else that gets poured down the drain.

Now for something completely different: Atmospheric water generators. These are basically food-grade dehumidifiers that can pluck water from the air and put it in a bottle. Wait, why doesn’t everyone have these? At the moment they are energetically expensive. But they don’t have to be. Fog collection is widely observed in nature, from our native redwoods to the namibian beetle that can collect water from the air. I’d love to see a water collection tower on the roof of every house, specially if its passive water collection or solar powered. Could urban water consumption possibly affect local climates? I’m no atmosphere scientist but I know a guy covered in turmeric and a loin cloth who would love to answer that.