Grey Water

     I am loving summer and greatly enjoying the bounty of my garden. I really enjoy going out every morning and picking the kale and lettuce for my lunch salad. The one thing I don't like is my water bill. Before we put in the garden we used very little water but it has almost doubled this year. Of course we are getting food out of the deal but I do feel guilty sometimes when I see all the water we use in the house and in the yard. And of course, this got me thinking.
     Many (many) years ago when I was an environmental education volunteer in the Peace Corps I learned a bit about ways to reduce water conservation, composting toilets and the like. I was oddly fascinated by these concepts but since I was not going into the waste management field when I returned home I didn't give them much thought. That is, until I bought a house and saw my water bill. Suddenly water conservation doesn't seem like just an environmental issue but an economic one as well. Now, I could bore you with lots of facts about water usage or anecdotes about what it is like to live in a place where water is limited but I think a good pie chart might be more useful.

     This image was taken off LaFayette University's website although I think they got it off of Google to begin with. Anyway, this delicious pie chart gives you the average percentages of what we use water for in our homes. Flushing the toilet is the biggest followed by clothes washing, showering and just water coming from the faucets. If you add it all up it comes out to 70.5 gallons a day.
     Now is when I could say what other people around the world use per day and try and shame Americans into changing their habits. But that won't work. I think we all know by now that here in the US we use way more resources than anyone else. The point of this post is not to shame anyone but to put out ideas for how we can improve our lives which just so happen to also be environmentally friendly and save us money. That being said, let me explain gray water vs. black water.
     As most literate people can see from the chart, gray water is composed of what comes out of the shower, bath, down the faucets and from washing clothes. It is called this because most of the time it actually is gray. Usually there is not many toxins in gray water. Especially if you use eco-friendly soaps and detergents this water may be a little greasy and gross but with some simple filtration it can easily be reused. (More on that later)
    Black water on the other hand is what comes out of the toilet and in this case the dish washer and kitchen sink. I learned about black water in Fiji where there were not many dishwashers so that one is new to me. Anyway, although the water may not actually be black it is called black water because it can carry pathogens and be dangerous. So black like death.

     Now we get to the fun part. What can you do with this water? The vast majority of American homes have it carried away to the local water treatment plant or into their own septic system. Used once and then gone. But what if you could reuse it? Yuck, I know, right? But it is not as crazy as it sounds. Take a look at this little devise.

     This is the Sloan Aqus Greywater System. And I think it is adorable. A reusable filter keeps out the hair and larger gunk while chlorine helps to get rid of the germs. Then the clean(er) water is used to flush the toilet. Although the water is not clean enough to drink, I really don't care because I don't drink out of my toilet, it is totally safe to flush the toilet with. Here is another diagram which might help you wrap your head around this concept.

     Simple idea, right? How is it that not every home in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada has one of these? If you refer back to the pie chart you will see that on average this could save 18 gallons of water a day. Water rates vary but with a price tag of less than $200 I think this little guy could pay for himself pretty quickly. This is a really simple and easy form of reusing grey water. Whenever you can replace clean water with grey water then you are saving money and resources. I am happy to clean out a filter every so often if I can save 6, 570 gallons of water a year or about 25% of my water bill.

     In my next post I will talk about even more gray water systems. What if you could reuse all that water from your shower and clothes washer to water your garden? Talk about money in your pocket!