Ready or not, ‘toilet to tap’ recycled wastewater is coming to a spigot near youBY AMANDA LITTLE BLOOMBERG OPINION MAY 21, 2021 05:00 AMIt�...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
BY AMANDA LITTLE BLOOMBERG OPINION MAY 21, 2021 05:00 AM
It’s actually harder to make salty seawater drinkable than to filter impurities from sewage.
More than a few dystopian fantasies depict a future in which humanity’s water supply derives from recycled human waste. As Frank Herbert imagined it in his 1965 novel “Dune” — now a much-anticipated fall 2021 blockbuster — the humans inhabiting a dessicated, rainless planet must wear “stillsuits”— a rubbery second skin that captures bodily wastes and recycles them into drinking water.
Today, elements of this vision are becoming a reality. While no climate models predict a future without rain on Earth, all show severe disturbances in hydrology: increasingly excessive rain and flooding in some regions, and intensifying drought in others. California has now become a leading example of the latter. Suffering through a prolonged dry period, utilities are increasingly relying on sewage to generate the state’s water needs.
Known in industry parlance as “recycled wastewater” and in lay terms as “toilet to tap,” this water source understandably triggers a gag reflex in some consumers — but it shouldn’t. Recycled wastewater is quickly becoming the single most important element of a drought-proof water supply in the climate change era, and it happens to be as pure and delicious as anything you might buy bottled from the Swiss Alps.
SOURCE: https://amp-kansascity-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/syndicated-columnists/article251562923.html
Media
Taxonomy
- Water Reuse & Recycling
- Reuse
- Recycling and reuse
- Toilet To Tap