November 2009 Archives

Space Shuttle Endeavor took off for the International Space Station this past Saturday, to deliver a device capable of recycling urine into water. The $250 million urine recycling system will use a process of distillation, filtration, ionization and oxidization to turn "yesterday's coffee into today's coffee" as one NASA astronaut puts it.

The recycling system will be tested in space and the water will be sampled by engineers back on Earth before being used by the astronauts on the space station. It's already been tested on Earth, and samplers couldn't taste any difference between tap water and the recycled urine water except for a slight taste of iodine which controls microbial growth.

Now I know why I didn't become an astronaut - oh, and then there was physics...

Photo: Space Station Toilet on Flickr from Richardefreedman under Creative Commons License

Last week, I wrote a post about the beautiful drinking water fountain in Grand Central Station in New York City after seeing an article about it in the New York Times. Well, instead of just admiring your city's drinking water fountains, you can now add them to a database so that other people can admire them too - by using them of course!

Think Outside the Bottle has a great website that allows you to add your favorite drinking water fountains to a Google map so that others can search them out and use them. Right now, they only have a couple listed in NYC and 37 on the site in total - so they need you to add your favorites as soon as you can.

TapIt also has a water fountain map on its blog. It only covers NYC but I think it has about 50 locations. And you can add as many more as you like. You can also search out one of TapIt's partner locations to access tap water- we're in 10 states now!

No matter how you access your public drinking water system, today is the day to be thankful for it. As the founder of TapIt I'm not just thankful for public drinking water systems and fountains, I'm thankful for all the cafe and restaurant owners who signed on to TapIt's program in the last year and helped make tap water more accessible. 

This week, CNN will showcase its top heroes of 2009 including a warrior in the water world that we're particularly excited about: Doc Hendley, founder of Wine to Water, a non-profit focused on providing clean water worldwide to those in need.

One of the things that makes Hendley's charity different from other water charities is creative fundraising. Wine to Water began by hosting wine tasting events to raise money for water projects around the world--go figure, since Hendley used to be a bartender. The tastings have been very successful and the organization has worked to provide clean water and sanitation through sustainable water systems in countries such as Sudan, India, Cambodia, Uganda, Ethiopia and Haiti.

Now Wine to Water has it's own wine, Old Wine Zinfandel and Chardonnay, both from the Gnekow Family winery in Lodi, California. And provides the tools for you to host your own fundraising wine tasting party. Everything you need from an invitation template to a water factsheet are found on the web site to make hosting a benefit easy. All you have to do is organize your friends, family or community at your home or restaurant to imbibe and donate. We think it's a great idea for holiday parties and gatherings.

You can hear more about Hendley's story and accomplishments on CNN Heroes at 9pm, November 26.

Photo courtesy of Wine to Water.

You've probably heard about a lot of things turning up in our drinking water and waterways. Usually, you'd probably rather not know what's lurking in your H2O -- prescription drugs, cocaine, atrazine, triclosan -- but a recent look at the Puget Sound found traces of something sweeter. Researchers from the University of Washington's Sound Citizen program, which examines how what we do on land affects what goes on in the water, discovered interesting fluctuations of more pleasant water contaminates around the holidays.

Coming up for Thanksgiving, levels of turkey seasonings thyme and sage will surge. Throughout the winter cinnamon levels are up. And for Fourth of July, the water gets inundated with remnants of waffle cones and caramel cones. Weekends year round see an increase of chocolate and vanilla flavorings, most likely due to parties. In fact, according to researchers, on average there's about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water in the Sound. How's that for flavored water?

In reality you won't taste it in your tap water. After any spices or flavors go down your drain, they travel to sewage treatment plants where most contaminants are removed, but that waste-water with the remains have to go somewhere.

Even though the report on spices in the Sound is filled with fun facts, at least more fun than facts about rocket fuel in our water, the point still remains that everything we do in our day-to-day lives is ultimately connected to the watershed. And while, so far, there's no evidence that spices harm marine life, scientists say salmon do have a sense of smell and plan to study the affects of cooking ingredients on octopus reproduction in the Puget Sound. 

Photo by Yapps Cotta on Stock.xchng

If you need to encourage anyone to ditch the bottled water habit, here's a little motivation: It could lead to a bad sex life. A recent study of Chinese factory workers who were exposed to high doses of bisphenol A (BPA) on the job found they had a higher occurrence of sexual problems including lower sexual desire, impotence and even satisfaction.

The study, published by the journal Human Reproduction, reported that the men exposed to high levels of BPA were four times more likely to experience erectile dysfunction than other factory workers in the same town. 

While there's no need for the average person to be alarmed -- the men in the study had BPA levels 50 times that of the norm for American men -- it does bring more attention to the importance of limiting exposure.

The FDA still calls the trace amounts that leach out of plastic bottles and canned food safe. But with study after study linking BPA to reproductive and nervous system issues not to mention prostate and breast cancers, heart attacks and diabetes, the FDA is taking another look. In the meantime, stay away from bottled water and choose a BPA-free refillable bottle for drinking tap on the go instead.
 
Photo by Phil Dragash on flickr used under a Creative Commons License

The 'Yes Men' are back after their ingenious press conference representing the US Chamber of Commerce, with a Coca Cola marketing campaign.

Working with Take Back The Tap in Boston, the Yes Men team launched a re-branding of Dasani bottled water called 'Deception', made with pure municipal water.

After the launch in a Boston park, these new "Coca Cola Spokespeople" did some public outreach to see what people thought about the new Deception labeled bottled water.

Watch the results below:

Not just a sub-plot on 30Rock anymore, NBC Universal is going green. According to the company, they are making major strides to eliminate waste on television and movie sets with their Green 17 initiative and the Green is Universal campaign. This consists of 17 green goals to be instituted on set such as recycling and the elimination of bottled water use.

30Rock takes the cake for being way ahead of the curve. While many television sets are trying to complete the 17 goals, 30Rock claims they already fulfilled them earlier this year and are looking for new ways to improve.

One Universal movie production stood out for making some major green moves. On the set of The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud starring Zac Efron (due out next year), bottled water was replaced with a filtration system and 5 gallon jugs. Over a 50 day production schedule, this was estimated to prevent 20,000 water bottles from entering the waste stream. Now that's impressive!

As if Governor Rick Perry isn't enough idiocy coming out of Texas, now State environmental officials are considering a proposal to allow millions of gallons of treated sewage to be dumped into Texas lakes.

The plan, up for preliminary consideration today at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would lift a 23-year-old ban on discharges of effluent into the Highland Lakes, which provide drinking water to more than a million people.

The cities of Leander and Granite Shoals asked the State to lift the ban because it's cheaper to dump the waste in the lakes rather than use it for irrigation or other land-based applications. They say it will help foster economic growth and refill lakes that have been stressed by drought. 

Opponents, including the Sierra Club, say that the waste would ruin the pristine waters of the Highland Lakes whose clear waters are a big draw for scuba divers, fishermen and recreational boaters. They also note that lake levels would only rise by about 5 inches, which is not much of a benefit given lake levels are down by 33 feet.

Water quality experts say the effluent has high amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen, elements that can't be cheaply removed from human waste. They say the "nutrients" will cause algae blooms, decreasing water clarity and create odor and taste issues for the drinking public.

Three TCEQ commissioners appointed by Governor Perry will decide whether to lift the effluent ban - Yikes! But staffers are recommending that the issue undergo further study by a special panel of interested parties in the region before any decision is made. 

How about this. If they vote to lift the ban, Texas has to secede...

Photo: Lake Travis from the Oasis by Kent Wang under Creative Commons License

The NY Times reported this morning on Grand Central Terminal's beautiful drinking water fountain. The fountain has been there since the terminal opened in 1913 - although most people don't notice it, preferring instead to pay $2 for water in a plastic bottle.

Rivaling any fountain in Europe, the bubbler sports carvings of oak leaves and acorns -- a Vanderbilt family symbol - and is set into a marble wall. Stylish!

Upon testing, the NY Times found the water to be lead free, and after a phone call to Metro North, discovered that Grand Central's two fountains are cleaned twice a day - no safety concerns there!

So next time you're in Grand Central - don't reach for your wallet, go looking for this beautiful fountain instead. You'll save yourself some cash and reduce plastic waste that ends up in landfills!

Photo: Josh Haner, The NY Times  

A slum in Lima, Peru is the first to install fog catchers to collect water. Shown at left, the fog catchers are about 26 feet by 13 feet and are installed on mountaintops alongside fog catching trees which are adapted to the arid climate.

At first, the fog catchers just irrigate the trees, but as the trees grow larger and send roots deeper (in their second year), they begin to irrigate themselves. Then channels are installed underneath the trees and a part of the water that falls down from their leaves and branches is skimmed off for human use. It works out to about 60 liters of water per night in winter!

The water is mostly used for drinking and cooking, but can also be used to irrigate small vegetable gardens. And although the nets cost about $800 each and water purifying tabs are needed for drinking, but having access to clean water and being able to raise food is well worth the cost. 

In Lima, more than 1.3 million people have no access to drinking water. Water trucked in is to expensive for most people in the poorer areas so they often go without. But the 200 residents of Bellavista del Parasio are going for water independence with their fog catching system.

To learn more about catching fog, the German NGO Alimon, and the Green Desert Project check out their website - the photos are great.

Photo: Green Diary

In a recent article on Green Inc. in the New York Times, parallels were discussed between our current  fresh water and ground water shortage to that of the dwindling supply of oil.

Many believe that water, like oil has reached peak supply. In the case of water, this means that aquifers are being drained faster than they can naturally be replenished. With 2.4 billion people in the world lacking adequate drinking water supplies, this does not seem far fetched.

Todd Jarvis the associate director at the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University believes that we need to learn from the oil crisis to better deal with the groundwater crisis.

In many countries, the law gives landowners unlimited access to the groundwater under their land. Many landowners will extract as much as they can from these aquifers even though they share the water source with many other landowners and people. By not cooperating on preserving the supply, the water is used up at an unsustainable rate.

The law surrounding oil wells on the other hand often requires all owners above the oil wells to share in the management and profits of an oil well. This makes the well better managed and gives an incentive for creating a sustainable supply.

Cooperative management makes even more sense for water than oil. Unlike oil, we all need water to survive.

Photo Credit: 'Free Wine' via Flickr

Designers Seol Ah Sun and Kim Hyo Jin have designed a futuristic looking device that uses the natural processes of trees to collect water. The Savior Bud is a basically a small bulb that is attached to the leaves of trees and passively collects water from the trees' respiratory process. It was designed for people in areas without a reliable drinking water supply.

After 4 hours of being attached to any broad leafed tree, the Savior bud will produce 1 cup of water. That is not bad for passive collection, requiring no energy.

Sun and Jin were originally inspired by the children's book, The Giving Tree, a story of a young boy's relationship to an ever-generous tree.

You can check out the full layout of the Savior Bud from the Seoul Design Olympiad here.

Starting this week, a group of students at Texas A & M University are giving up all beverages like juice, soda and bottled water and are only drinking tap water for 14 days. The money saved by students will be collected by The Wells Project and given to Living Water International  which aims to give those in water deprived areas new wells for drinking water.

It is estimated that every $1 donated to the construction of wells in developing areas, provides drinking water for one person for a year. So, each time you refrain from buying one iced tea or soda you could be helping one or two people for an entire year! That is a huge impact.

In general, this is really a great way to raise money for water. Everyone gets to appreciate and be thankful that we, as Americans, have easy access to clean water, while helping others who are less fortunate by giving away money we would have spent otherwise.

Who knows, some people may realize, after the 14 days, that only drinking tap water is the way to go. After all, it not only saves you money, it is also very healthy.

Photo Credit: 'Dan4th' via Flickr

California's water situation seems to be perpetually grim. So conserving water is often top-of-mind for residents there. Now Ventura County residents can get a free water audit of their house or apartment from California American Water, a water utility serving about 20,000 households there. You've gotta love free stuff and this is one free thing that should save you cash, too.

The free Water Wise survey will look at both indoor and outdoor water usage to help customers save water and in turn, lower their water bills. Inside your home, they'll test flow rates of showerheads and faucets, estimate toilet flush volumes and test for leaks. Outside, they'll examine irrigation design and watering schedules.

Besides the evaluation. Residents will get resources and tools they need to conserve water including a free conservation kit with low-flow showerheads and garden hose nozzles. Plus, they'll get tips on how to tell if they're over-watering their lawns and gardens, recommendations for drought tolerant plants that could be better matched to California gardens and information on toilet, clothes washer and landscape rebate programs.

If you're a California American Water customer and think you might be eligible for the free program, email lani.olsen@amwater.com to sign up. Otherwise, look at your water usage yourself. Check for leaky faucets, swap out old showerheads and faucets for low-flow options and install a bag in your toilet to save water. You can also check out Water Use It Wisely's 100+ ways to conserve water.  

Image by tlloyd on Stock.xchng.

Could robotic fish be responsible for watching the quality of our drinking water? Maybe. Researchers at Michigan State University are studying robotic fish that could potentially monitor the cleanliness of our water. Nature has inspired technology in this case because fish, by nature, are very efficient in moving through the water, so they could provide more precise data on conditions below the surface than humans can collect.

Like the real thing, the robotic versions modeled after the yellow perch, will swim in schools when they're patrolling the water. They'll test water quality by collecting a constant stream of data on pollution temperature, dissolved oxygen and harmful algae. Scientists couldn't gather this much consistent data on their own, so the fish will help paint a much better picture of what outside forces are affecting freshwater ecosystems.

Xiaobo Tan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MSU who is working on the 9-inch prototype says, "The project is very practical, and we are designing the fish to be inexpensive so they can be used in various applications like sampling lakes, monitoring aqua-farms and safeguarding water reservoirs."

While MSU's fish may sound new to you, it's actually not the first water pollution-seeking robotic fish to go for a swim. But everyone is working to make their robot fish to swim as true-to-life as possible. Engineers at MIT worked on a prototype earlier this year to monitor pipelines and sunken ships along with water pollution. And scientists at the University of Essex created robotic carp that are now swimming through a Spanish port to find leaky vessels or pipelines that could be causing pollution as part of a three-year research project.

Photo: Courtesy of Michigan State University  

Michael Pritchard, an inventor specializing in nano technology, recently demonstrated his Lifesaver personal water filter at a TEDGlobal (Technology-Entertainment-Design) talk at Oxford. He showed how his nano-pores water filter could take the absolute worst quality water, like what is found in floods or disaster areas, and make it drinkable. The results were extraordinary.

Pritchard took water from the River Cherwell and the River Thames in Oxford and added water from his pond, sewage runoff, unidentified plant matter and rabbit poop. Then after putting the water in the portable Lifesaver water filter and pumping it maybe 3 times, it came out as perfectly good water. Pritchard then drank from it and shared it with the moderator.

Pritchard also claims that his device is available at a very low cost. He estimates that for $20 billion, personal filtration systems like the Lifesaver can give clean drinking water to all 3.5 billion people in the world who need it. Using conventional water treatment plants, this would cost tens or hundred times more. Watch the full video from the TEDGlobal conference below:

Studies have shown that prescription drugs are present in our drinking water. Some of the traces of pharmaceuticals come from pills we take, which are later excreted after they pass through our bodies and others come from medications that get flushed down the toilet right into our water systems.

Even though the levels of drugs in our water are low and probably have very little impact on us, it's a different story for fish and other animals who are exposed to the water beyond drinking it. Cholesterol medications can change an animals metabolic rate and birth control can contribute to turning male fish into hermaphrodites, for example.

So what should you do with prescription drugs that are expired or no longer needed? The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has created a list of medications that could pose a danger to people or pets in your home such as opioid painkillers that are highly addictive. They urge people to flush these medications (currently there are 26 on the list) for safety reasons.

However, the brains behind SmartRx Disposal say you should never flush medications or pour them down the sink drain. Instead, they offer an environmentally responsible and safe alternative for disposing of prescription drugs. First, pour medication into a plastic bag you can seal. Crush any solid pills or capsules or add liquid to dissolve them. Next, add a mixer that will make the medication less appealing to kids and pets like coffee grounds, sawdust or kitty litter. Then, seal the bag and put it in the garbage. No flushing into our water supply necessary.  

Image by personalfx on Stock.xchng.

Musician Jackson Browne, best known for 1970's classics such as "Running On Empty" and a career of political activity, came out against bottled water last week.

In a recent interview with Beth Terry, author of the blog fakeplasticfish.com, Jackson Browne explains how bottled water companies are ripping us off, how he avoids bottled water in the airport and ways to reject bottled water available in hotel rooms.

Check out the interview below:





Photo Credit: Alan Light via Flickr

As water supplies dwindle in California, legislators and other organizations are scrambling to come up with solutions to make sure supplies are available for the future.

California has been using an extraction strategy for the past few decades to supply water to cities and agricultural areas. This has included damming rivers, building larger reservoirs and tapping aquifers. Conservation strategies have been largely overlooked and for the most part water extraction infrastructure has been given priority over environmental concerns.

Going forward, California is going to need to balance long term environmental concerns with quickly creating new water supplies to meet growing demand. Water Conservation could play a larger role as it would reduce water shortages without the high costs and environmental impacts of new infrastructure.

According to the Pacific Institute, Agricultural water conservation, which includes reducing the use of flood plains, drip irrigation and improved crop watering schedules to account to for weather and growth cycles, has the ability to cut consumption by 1.8 trillion gallons annually.That is 15 times the annual water consumption of the city of San Francisco.

On top of agricultural water savings, it is estimated that using existing residential water conservation technologies, Californians can reduce their water use by one third at a cost lower than tapping into new sources.

Hopefully, as California state legislators debate a water bill to address the crisis, they will come up with a plan that includes strong conservation measures.

Photo Credit: WATE NO WATER via Flickr