Greywater: No Longer a Grey Area
Sep 10th, 2007 by sorbe
The City of Boulder recently announced that it will allow grey water recycling under a new set of guidelines. Considering that the average household uses 300-400 gallons of purified water per day, and that 45% of the water used is consumed by showers and sinks, the installation of a simple grey water recycling system could go a long way to aid in household water conservation. Basic approaches, such as the Aqus System divert sink and shower water to the toilet basin, giving your grey water a second life before going on to end it’s usable life cycle as less friendly “black water.” More advanced systems can be costly to retrofit to an existing structure, but are an option for home builders looking to lessen the environmental impact of their projects.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this topic. As it is relatively new to the area, let us know if you have any other input or insight.
Greywater is definitely becoming a more common household word. You may care to check out the Greywater Guerrillas:
http://www.greywaterguerrillas.com/
-Lisa, Oakland California
Thanks for the link. I checked it out.. Nice to see some additional add to the greywater topic.
It has been an uphill battle for greywater here in Colorado.
I was just out in California last weekend. I have heard the West Coast Green at Moscone in San Fran. is going to have several exhibitors promoting green items this week. If you have not heard of the conference. It sounds like it will be insightful.
Without paying for an elaborate re-plumbing of my house; one of the easy ways I save water is by placing a bucket in my shower to catch all the cold water I run while waiting for the hot water to arrive. I use this bucket to flush the toilet. During the warmer weather, I use my outdoor shower where all the water flows directly to the garden.
BTW, I’ve just removed 1300 sq. ft. of lawn from my front yard and am replacing with California native drought tolerant landscaping.