PCC Geography: Mr. Lee

Legal Grey-Waste Water ''Recycling''

Apr 14, 2008

Here is an easy grey-waste water ?“recycling?” technique that can be easily and legally done in any southern California home. In many areas, municipalities have charged people for water and sewer service. In some areas, this is simplified by measuring the amount of water used. The assumption is that whatever water is supplied to a home will be discharged as waste water.

For health and sanitation reasons, California prohibits or restricts the discharge of grey water (waste water that does not include human wastes) on the land surface. However, there is a simple way that any person can safely ?“recycle?” grey waste water in their home: Use it to flush the toilet.

It is simply a matter of saving water from dish washing, washing of fruits and vegetables, hand washing and showering in containers. In our home, we use various sized plastic tubs. Instead of letting the water run down the drain when we wash our hands, fruits, or vegetables, we put a plastic tub in the sink to catch the water. When the container is full, we take it to the bath room and empty it into buckets or larger containers in the bathtub. After using the toilet, we flush using the grey waste water from the buckets and containers in the bath tub.

This simple water conservation technique saves both money and water. The city charges you for the fresh water used to wash your hands and to flush the toilet. In our house, we only pay for the fresh water used to wash our hands. Since the same water is then used to flush the toilet, we save about 1.5 gallons in water charges per flush. Add that up about 15 gallons/day in our house.

We set up small plastic tubs and stand in them when showering. It isn?’t perfect, but we manage to catch about 5-8 gallons of water per shower. This gives us about 16 gallons, nearly all of flush water we need per day. Add all this up over a month and we save about 450 gallons per month or about 5,400 gallons per year.

Nearly 50% of the people on Earth cannot get to clean drinking water each day. The amount of water saved by the simple method above would give 1 person more than a 14 year supply of drinking water (at a survival rate of 1 gallon per day)!

With growing concerns over the prolonged drought, water conservation should be a top priority. And when simple conservation practices also put money in your pocket, it makes even more sense to do it.

For additional water conservation ideas, visit:
www.bewaterwise.com
http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/