Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Gray water

So for about a week now I've been saving the gray water I use at work (Gray water is water that is left over after you wash your hands or rinse dishes, etc).  I've saved about 60 gallons of water this week (and this is just the gray water produced at work, which is about 7-8 hours a day for 5 days).  If I continue doing this that would be about 240 gallons in one month. If just 100 people in L.A. did this for a month that would be 24,000 gallons of water saved in a month. Now imagine if 100 people saved ALL their gray water for a month!  Thats a lot of water saved!  Try it out for a day!  Its not hard to do and doesn't really take that much time out of your day!

Edit: I've been doing research on grey water an, well, I should have known it was too good to be true :/ well, in my case anyways :( I guess you are not suppose to use grey water for flushing toilets unless 1. Its been treated by a whole big process which would require purchasing a huge system.  I can't do that at work or at home since I live in an apartment :( 2. you put the water directly into the toilet bowl which also I think requires special devices :/.  I'm bummed.  It seems like such a great idea! (not sure where I read about it originally) but I've now learned that some times if the pressure is off water from your toilet tank can flow back into the fresh water supply and if you've put grey water in there, there could be bacteria and such.  Bummer! :( Well, that at least gives me something to look forward to once I buy/rent my own house!

1 comment:

Crafty Green Poet said...

that's really interesting! I didn't know that,