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I hope everybody agrees upon one thing. We are complex species. Our world is multi- layered. Our building methods are tedious. Our food, complex and processed. Our clothing is factory made and our transportation methods- highly advanced. Our every single act of "living" needs energy and our every single life cycle process generates tremendous waste. 

If we look around us, every species have its own uniqueness. Some species have unique migratory patterns, some have peculiar eating habits, some have unique vibrant colors, while some have unique eating patterns. I wonder if consuming energy and creating waste is our uniqueness. 

More than 250 million tons of solid waste is produced each year in the United States. Out of which, more than half is discarded in the landfills. Our life cycle processes create so much waste that it has to be either tucked away in landfills or burned in incinerators. Most of the other countries in the world do not have this kind of " luxury". Many developing countries face a gigantic issue of waste management and waste is seen floating in piles through roads, slums, water bodies, open space, etc. Waste is far less important to be discarded properly. It affects our environment, contaminates our natural habitat and disturbs our ecological balance.

Can we somehow bridge this gap between the energy we consume and the waste we produce?

-Enter Denmark. 

For many small and dense countries around the world, [especially Europe] like Denmark, creating landfills is not an option. There is no physical space where the waste material can stay for hundreds of years to come. "Abandoned and forgotten" waste material is creating a new movement throughout the country. Which has helped Denmark cut energy costs  and reduce dependence on oil and gas. They now use their solid waste as an effective source to generate electricity and heat for most of the neighborhoods in the towns such as Horsholm and Copenhagen. District heating, steam for industrial purposes, district cooling is managed at such "waste-to-energy" creating facility along with creating electricity. Any type of waste that is non-decomposing, can not be recycled or upcycled through economically and environmentally safe processes is used as a source of energy.

There are two primary methods through which energy is produced- 

1. In the landfills, through landfill gases- Inside the landfill, as the waste keeps decomposing, it collects landfill gases. the gases are collected in the underground wells and are used to generate electricity. One ton of waste can generate 65kWh of electricity.

2. Burning of waste material to create energy- Waste is combusted on a moving grate while air is added to the process. Little or no pre-treatment of waste is needed. Waste is burned to heat a boiler that generates steam for moves a turbine and generates electricity. One ton of waste can generate 590kWh of electricity.

 In the landfill gas collecting process methane gas is generated from garbage, while in the incinerator process, carbon dioxide is produced. Methane being recognized as highly potent for global warming, Denmark has invested considerable research and finances to design type 2 incinerators. They use the  cutting edge technology in filtering and prevent hazardous substance such as Hydrochloric Acid, Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide,other heavy metals, etc. from escaping back in the atmosphere. Every waste incinerating plant has emission levels upto twenty percent less than that are allowed by law. It is their claim that a waste incinerating plant burns more cleanly than that of wood burning fire places and backyard barbeques in the neighborhood homes. Denmark now regards garbage as "clean-er" energy source, and has about thirty operational plants. 

Integration of the "waste-to-energy" plants in the neighborhood. 

One of the commendable parts, according to me, about the waste to energy program is the integration of this concept on the grass-root level in the community planning. Waste-to -energy plants are integrated in the community development at the design stage. They are not an after thought. They are stretigically placed in the master plan so that electricity and heat both can be pumped in the communities at the optimum economic value. Yet they are away from the main neighborhood activity areas. They appeal to the aesthetic sence of the community because they are designed as sculptures, confirming to the vernacular architecture. They are served by dedicated garbage carrying routes. As a result, heating and electicity costs in such communities are considerably lower. Neighborhoods are quite self sufficient in managing the waste it creates in this manner. 

There are pros and cons to each technology we use. 

Incinerating waste has its own by-products or more waste. Besides electicity and heat, there are other by products such as flue gas, waste water, bottom ash, fly ash and residues from flue gas treatment. The glue gas and waste water have to be cleaned according to the strict environmental standards prior to their emission, while bottom ash and fly ash and the other residues need specialized treatment facilities.Secondly, We need to sacrifice "not in my backyard" attitude, since such plants can only be effective if they are located close to the community. 

But most importantly we need to take responsibility for the waste we create. No energy source [except for natural] can be entirely clean. The fact that many countries are looking at garbage waste as a clean-er source of energy is worth taking note about and researching further. Can waste be looked at as a  sustainable, indegenious raw material that is forever available? More energy generation for our consumption needs can never be sustainable. Energy recovery systems such as waste-to-energy concepts have potential to create energy independence for small communities if not for the entire countries. And that self sustainance according to me is a key to survive in the post hydrocarbon world.

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Trash to Treasure - EarthShip Construction.

What can you achieve with the discarded rubber tires and rammed earth??

Earthship Construction 

Reinvent and Redesign!!!

This exercise has made me realize few very important things besides the obvious fact of water conservation and water reuse.

It made me think about the disconnect between our present and future. And that, we HAVE to look beyond today to realize what is good for us tomorrow. I will always be an avid supporter of the two principals that I think I learned from this personal exercise- 

1. We have to reinvent the products that we use , not for just one product life but for the second or a third one too. I hope in future we can have soaps or body wash, that are not hazardous to us and our environment. I hope a simple filtration system is really enough to reuse our bath water for the plants. The ingredients that are not harmful for our skin are in fact the nutrients for the plants that they wont have to filter out. 

2.Using a home-made filter is definitely an eye opener, but it is most certainly not sufficient for the current times. We have to redesign our systems to  incorporate the technology for "recycle and reuse"  from the very beginning!

That is how, according to me,  we can claim to be "technologically advanced" species. 

consumption-easy, conservation...hmmm...not so easy!

Until now my life was easy. 

I have always used water with utmost care. We have a low flow-flush toilets in our apartments. And the water saving shower head. We mostly take showers than long baths. We keep turning the tap off while brushing the teeth, water our small patio garden only as much needed. And then we realized this was never going to be enough!

The project challenged me with an opportunity to take the water conservation to the next level! What is better than using water carefully? Re-using it! Conservationists have always insisted on recycling and reusing our grey water. Water that we use once for bathing, cooking and dish or clothes washing. Water that we can not drink,  but can certainly use for other purpose, such as flushing the toilets, gardens, washing cars, etc. 


Fact is we can not use this water without at least being filtered once.Good news is its not all that difficult! Researching, reading and building the sand- gravel water filter has been quite educational for me. What I realized was - that was not the hard part at all! The hard part was to use it!


I am not going to lie about how ridiculously inconvenient it is to collect the bath/shower water. To pour it mug by mug into the water filter and keep doing so till the sufficient amount of water is filtered to save at least one flush of potable water. If an average water consumption for a five minutes shower is approximately ten gallons, we should be able to save a number of flushes a day, but due to the water storage problem, lets just say we do manage to save at least two flushes everyday!


Does not look like a lot at this time, however,  I am a firm believer that EVERY SMALL ACTION MATTERS and that is sufficient enough for me to keep going on, for now.

Testing the water filter.

Experiment - 1

Garden soil + Water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSERWdr757Q

Experiment - 2

Simulated bath water!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISikuENPMOU

While I am quite certain that the water used with method body wash ( after filtration) is perfectly alright for flushing toilets, I can not say the same about using it for the gardens. Even the non-edible ones. 

True, the organic matter in the garden soil can filter many of the chemical elements present in my body wash as mentioned in my previous post, and that my plants are "smart" enough to avoid the chemicals being absorbed in their system to a great extent. But my small patio garden is also not equipped with all the good microbes, bacterias, earthworms, the sun rays, deep layers of healthy permeable soil and many such nature's weapons -the soil ecosystem in totality- to filter the chemical residues in the bath water. 

I would feel a little better if the personal care products that we use for bathing were designed with "the second life of bath water" in mind. For now, the scope of my water filtration project will be limited to using the filtered   bath water to reduce the number of toilets flushes in my household!

Filtering Bath Water.

Baths or showers are the essential to our life style. They wash away the dirt, perspiration and stress collected through our fast paced daily life. Water can have the most soothing and relaxing effects on our tired bodies and mind. But they require using soaps and can consume huge quantities of water!!While we can't avoid taking baths, we most certainly can avoid all that  "gray water" being wasted down the drain. 

Soaps are a major players in our baths. Filtering and reusing our bath water would be really easy as a blink of an eye (well not literally) if we did not use soaps. Millions of tons of soap ends up in our grey water through our baths. Various chemicals and artificial fragrances in soap are not just hazardous for environment, but they have now proven be be injurious to our health. 

Soaps and detergents  brands (that are aware of the water and health hazzard a soap can cause) have launched many environmentally responsible products which are more "natural" and more "biodegradable". Such as the body wash I use, by "method". 

method is now considered a leader in manufacturing greener products, packaged in environmentally responsible containers. Their products are made up of natural substances or derived from the natural substances with approved processes. Here is a link to the further reading for the queries about method label. 

http://www.methodhome.com/behind-the-bottle/natural from their website. 

I am extremely happy that I do not put parabens, phthalates, triclosan, EDTA or animal by-products in my system when I use this product. However I kept wondering  how on earth was I going to filter-

sodium lauryl, 

glucose carboxylate, 

lauryl glucoside, 

coco/sunfloweramidopropyl betaine, 

coco glucoside, glyceryl oleate, 

glycol distearate, 

glyceryl stearate, 

oryza sativa (rice) germ oil, 

oryza sativa (rice) bran extract, 

althaea officinalis extract, 

guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, 

glycerin, 

benzyl alcohol, 

olea europaea (olive) fruit oil, 

dehydroacetic acid, 

phenoxyethanol, 

benzoic acid, 

dmdm hydantoin, 

sorbic acid, 

fragrance (parfum)

..... and many such substances that are present in this body wash!

I might need all theses chemicals to clean myself if I pig-wrestled in a knee deep mud every day. Why do I HAVE to use all these chemicals on my skin which nature would most certainly filter out? 

Building a Sand-Gravel Filter.

Got a water container from a friend which was otherwise going in a recycle bin. We then cut open the upper top for a wider rim. 

 A short wash to the pebbles picked up from a friend's garden. 

There goes the first layer- big stones/ pebbles

Then the second layer - small stones/pebbles

The third layer- fine natural sand, which was available in Home Depot for $5.00 a bag. 

The fourth and most expensive layer of the project- activated carbon, available at pet store for $ 9.99

Fifth and optional layer- aquarium filter, available at pet store for about $7.00

My first ever home made sand-gravel water filter. Ready to be tested with simulated bath water. 

My foster kitty Grobin made sure the filter- building went smoothly :)

How Does Nature Filter Water?

The water on Earth has been existing for millions of years and will exist for the next millions of years. Its the same water that rained down upon our ancestors that we use today, and it will be the same water that our future generations will use thousand years from now. Nature has been working extremely hard to use this water over and over and over through its hydrological cycle. 

I think that most important thing to remember is that - Nature does not offer us polluted water. 

Nature has created a brilliant water filtration system for the water that falls on the ground. Water is naturally filtered through the natural filter pads of dense, deep layers of dirt, gravel and sand.When the raindrops fall through various forests, deserts, wetlands, and many such "living filters", they absorb excess minerals,  nutrients and impurities from the water. The remaining water then seeps in the ground. As the gravitational force pulls the water deeper, it passes through layers and layers of gravel and soil. 

Soil is an awesome natural filter which performs three very significant tasks- 

1. Restore the PH balance of the water- sands help stabilize acidic particles in waters and restore its natural balance. 

2. Filtration of the solids- air gaps between the sand particles literally trap the solids allowing only water to seep through. Some soil particles or clays have an electrochemical attraction to water and can lock up some of the chemicals on their surface through this electro-chemical reaction. 

3. Biological treatment - As water seeps deeper, the soil layer becomes very dense , the air gets thinner.Oxygen gets lesser. This loss of oxygen  kills any biological contamination surviving in the water and sterilizes it off unwanted bacteria.

By the time water seeped in the ground reaches its destination water source, it is filtered by the ground it passes through. And without giving a thought to this delicate system nature created for us, we engage in various activities that destroy living filters such as forests and wetlands, degrade and contaminate the soil structure, contaminate the water sources with our non biodegradable, hazardous, chemical wastes. And makes the natural water purification process that much harder!!!

  

How Does Nature Balance Water?

Our Earth and atmosphere are primarily made up of water. 

Water evaporates  from the ocean with the natural solar heating, and water vapor is carried everywhere in the atmosphere by air currents. Eventually, at a certain height it cools down and water droplets in the vapor condense to form those beautiful clouds. If a cloud grows large enough, it gets heavy and moves down with the weight. That is when the droplets coalesce and fall as precipitation, mostly as rain, or sometimes as snow or ice. Most of the water evaporated into the atmosphere falls as precipitation on the ocean, and remaining most of it falls on the ground. The water that falls on ground has various paths to chose from. Some of the water runs into streams, lakes, and rivers, which return the water to the ocean. Some of the water is absorbed by the plants, while  some just seeps into the ground and becomes groundwater. 

In any case, our mother Nature strives really hard to maintain the precious Hydrological Cycle which is essentially a closed loop cycle of water from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to ocean and other reservoirs. We have to realize that hydrological cycle is one of the most intricately designed system that helps sustain Our Life on this planet Earth. 

Water

Water is probably one of the most magical natural resources we are blessed with.  Our body is up to seventy percent water. The air we breathe is a form of water, the planet we live on is made up of seventy percent water, and the atmosphere surrounding our planet is a form of water. Water is one element that makes our Earth astonishingly unique and conducive of life in this vast universe.

Water is thirst quenching, soothing, cleansing, appealing to our aesthetic sense, recreational,  vital for our agriculture and industries, essential for our well being and also for the most of us, available at the flick of the tap, whenever we want it, how much ever we want it. For most of us, water is not a privilege, it’s a commodity.

Having grown up India I have seen the other part of the world. Small towns that are completely dry on their ground water supplies and dangerously low on their annual rain fall. Villages receive water once a week. That made me aware of my privileged life in the big city and that I can be on the other side of the spectrum anytime.  If the recent times have taught us something, it is one thing - nothing is constant.  Somewhere deep within our heart , buried beneath the consumer habits, I hope  we are aware that only a fraction of world population does not face water based vulnerability and water might not be around if we don’t change. Things many not change drastically for us but they will, for our future generations and we will be responsible.

I have thought about water conservation every now and then. About contributing my tiny little part, however insignificant.  Apartment living has limited my previous attempts of water conservation up to harvesting the rain water in small pots and use it for my small garden. Now that the summer is here and my garden is going to be most thirsty, I want to find out more ways of conserving water. Therefore my challenge this summer is to make an all natural, zero energy and  very efficient  filter to filter and recycle the bath water.

I am excited to see what my plants think about it. I am quite sure they will do just fine!