Tag: Water

It May Sound Like a Potty Humor, But This Campaign to Conserve Water is Serious Business

Posted on by robbie

California’s drought has marked one of the worst on record, with 100 percent of the state affected. But while some parts of the state are completely tapped out, other areas continue to use water with little regard. Which is why a group of San Francisco entrepreneurs got the bright idea to turn an old money-saving trick into one that could help California save 6 billion gallons of water in just three months.
The Drop-A-Brick project began as a joke among the group about the double meaning of “dropping a brick,” but became an actual solution once the group recognized just how much Californians were flushing away.
Placing a brick in your toilet’s tank can save around a half of gallon of water per flush (a family of four save around 50 gallons a week). For a state under such dire conditions as California, it’s a method worth trying.

“We realized that toilets are the number one user of water in the home,” says Greg Hadden, one of the founders of the project. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates about 26.7 percent of municipal water is flushed away at residential households and California, in particular, wastes around 203 million gallons each day.

“All of us felt that while we were in this huge drought, there’s a massive lack of awareness of it. Nobody really seemed to understand how serious the situation is,” Hadden tells Fast Company. 

After researching the practice, Hadden said they realized that actual bricks can dissolve, cause clogging and lead to a pricey visit from the plumber. Instead, the group decided to design their own lightweight, environmentally-friendly rubber brick. Their unique version contains a dye tablet to help identify leaks as another means of water conservation and also ships flat in the mail, plus it doesn’t expand until added to water thanks to a hydrogel technology. The brick is also adaptable and can be formed into different shapes based on toilet design.

“While we’d like to get a lot of bricks out there — we think it’s a great icon for a public awareness campaign — really what we’d like to do is just get people thinking about urban water conservation and how to save water at home,” Hadden says.

The Drop-A-Bricks project is crowdfunding via Indiegogo and is also accepting additional donations to send extra bricks to some of the state’s worst areas that are relying on outsourced water. While the campaign is taking a lighthearted approach to raising awareness about the “big bowl movement,” the drop-a-brick project is a real solution to helping Californians conserve their valuable H2O.

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MORE: The Silver Lining to California’s Terrible Drought

Millions of Tiny Hairs Might Replace Your Windshield Wipers

Posted on by robbie

Do your wipers ever seem two swipes behind the storm, leaving you wishing that the rain never even made it to your windshield in the first place? Soon enough, it never will, thanks to an amazing innovation that has the potential to revolutionize glass.
Sounds crazy? Not to a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose new technology can control the behavior of glass.
Here’s how it works:
The engineers have created an elastic material that’s covered with tiny hairs that are about one quarter of the width of human hair. Introduce a magnetic pull and these fibers sway accordingly. Coat a windshield (or a window) with this hairy material, and water can be, in effect, redirected off of the glass.
The hair-like structures are most similar, and in fact inspired by, cilia — the tiny hairs in our noses that filter air.
The technology goes far beyond its inspiration, though, according to City Lab. It can even stop a water dead in its tracks on a vertical surface.
MIT’s latest advancement doesn’t just stop with liquids, though. It can also redirect sunlight, which could completely change the nature of windows. Not only can the hairs be manipulated to lighten or darken the glass gradually, they can also completely shut out light. Window shades and blinds may soon be a thing of the past.
“[The technology] could filter how much solar radiation you want coming in, and also shed raindrops. This is an opportunity for the future,”  MIT graduate student Yangying Zhu told MIT News.
If this innovation takes off, everyday life will be improved significantly. Beyond increased convenience, it can also improve safety, especially on the road. By wicking away water and reducing glare, everything from commutes to road trips will undoubtedly become much safer.
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MORE: An Idaho Couple is Literally Paving the Way to America’s Solar-Powered Future

Even as the Drought Continues, Californians Can Drink From a Firehose of Solutions

Posted on by robbie

Anyone who follows the news may hold their water bottles a little bit closer as they see how the country is running out of the liquid so central to our lives. After all, there are severe drought conditions — think: farms going thirsty and forests catching fire — in seven states. California, in particular, dominates headlines as it faces its third dry year in a row, with more than 60 percent of the state suffering from exceptional drought.
The list of consequences of this extreme weather will turn your mouth dry — from the billions that could be lost in farm revenue to the possibility of earthquakes brought on by groundwater withdrawal.
While the drought is nothing short of devastating (with some calling the situation in California a modern day Dust Bowl), the responses to the water shortage represent amazing examples of how crisis can yield creativity. Here are a few of our favorites.
California has put water conservation regulations into place, and the Los Angeles Times reports that those who continue to hose down their driveways or install wasteful water decorations can be fined up to $500 a day. Skeptical? Even if the state does not catch H2O wasters, unofficial “water cops” with mobile phones fill the void with their #DroughtShaming hashtag, posting pictures on virtual neighborhood watch programs.
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While these emergency restrictions and responses are temporary for now, they have the potential to raise awareness and change habits forever. Food editor and writer Elaine Corn put it perfectly in her post for the Sacramento Bee: “To protect ourselves from food shortages and to buffer California’s agricultural economy, we all should regard any adjustments that allow us to grow food with less water as permanent.”
Disasters like these demonstrate the connection between crisis and collaboration — both on a local and a global scale. For example, perhaps as we develop a fear about where our food will come from (or at least get scared away by high prices at produce stands), we will start to build our own community-supported agriculture systems. If we team up to give more to the land than we take from it, not only could we collaborate on fresh summer salads to bring to block parties, but we also could enrich our soil to soak up what little rain might fall in the years ahead.
MORE: One in Five Baltimore Residents Live in a Food Desert. These Neighbors are Growing their Own Produce.
In an example of collaboration across borders, researchers from the United States and Chile are working together to harvest fog — turning those tiny droplets you wipe off your windshields into drinking water. These kinds of partnerships will only gain more interest and momentum as the water supply shrinks and the need for new ideas grows. So perhaps as Texas looks to the Gulf of Mexico as a source for fresh water, it might also look a bit further to the Arabian Gulf and countries like Qatar, which already rely on desalinated water for the vast majority of their fresh water needs.
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As other sources of fresh water become scarcer, California is working on harnessing the power of the sun (instead of drawing on oil and gas) as a more sustainable way to power the water desalination process and turn brackish water into something drinkable. And there are other solutions, according to National Geographic, such as a smaller community working to merge its water system with a bigger neighbor, and the Kern County Water Agency is considering pumping nearly 50 miles of the California Aqueduct in reverse.
Of course, sometimes the best solutions come from rethinking how we use the tools already at our disposal, as reflected in a recent report from the Pacific Institute and the National Resources Defense Council, which looks at the massive amounts of water that could be saved by improving water use efficiency, increasing the capture of rainwater and stormwater and recycling and reusing water. See for yourself:
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And with Senate Democrats and House Republicans offering dueling solutions on how to aid California farmers, the state is seeking solutions from beyond the beltway, looking to startups like WellIntel, Tal-Ya, and WatrHub.
Ultimately, the solutions that help California get through the dry days should matter to everyone in America. And it’s not only because we may soon find ourselves dipping our bread and dressing our salad with a bottle of olive oil from the Golden State. It’s also because we can all learn a lot from the way the largest agricultural producer in the nation weathers this storm.

Which City Has the Best Tap Water?

Posted on by robbie

Not all water faucets produce equally. In fact, tap water can vary a lot these days — from grimy to cloudy to just simply flammable.
In Boston, however, you can find some great water. That’s because the city just won a national tap water taste test competition (yes, that exists) organized by the American Water Works Association.
The annual competition (which, by chance was held in Boston this year) revealed the secret to Boston’s delicious H2O: Watershed protection, according to Yes!
The city purchases its water from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which for the better part of the last 30 years has been buying conservation land near the Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs — both of which are the sources of Boston’s water.
This uninhabited, undeveloped space naturally filters the water before it reaches the reservoirs, as well as during its journey to the city, purifying it. This natural cleansing doesn’t just make it healthy and tasty; it also just about eliminates the need to use expensive chemical filtration on it, too.
The tasty tap water doesn’t come cheaply, though. It has cost the Authority billions of dollars to purchase the four hundred square miles of protected forest surrounding Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs, as well as their cleanup and conservation efforts along the Charles River and in Boston harbor.
Though with the huge improvement in quality made since 1985 (when the Authority was established), it seems like money well spent.
MORE: Extreme Makeover: 8 Inspiring Urban Renewal Projects

From Fog To Faucet? Read About This Innovative Source For Drinking Water

Posted on by robbie

Can you imagine turning fog, which is so annoying to drive in, to practical use as drinking water?
That’s just what a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pontifical Catholic University did, reports the Washington Post — and it just might be a solution to drought in America.
While fog collection has been around for thousands of years in various ways, shapes, and forms, this team’s design is the most efficient and practical method out there. Using an innovative mesh that contains very tightly spaced strands of stainless steel, the system traps water as fog passes through it.
This is no ordinary window screen, though. MIT tapped mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley to create a coating that would make the water droplets stick while also making sure they could slide down and be collected.
The result: A technology that can harvest 10 percent of fog into potable water, which is five times the amount of any predecessors. Although this quantity may sound modest, with scale and over time, the collection adds up. With this team’s continuing research, fog can become a legitimate water source used by millions of people.
The MIT and Pontifical Catholic group did their testing in the Chilean desert, though the fog nets can be used anywhere — including drought-stricken California.
With the water shortage on America’s west coast being a hot topic in recent years, fog catching could be one simple fix to the enormous problem. Constructed from stainless steel (substance already widely used), this technology is practical and applicable. And, with residents being asked to cut back water consumption by 20 percent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, any help to the problem should be welcome.
McKinley envisions fog-heavy areas such as the San Francisco Bay to benefit most from the nets, with other dry areas also making use of this remarkable innovation.
While fog was once at best, a natural beauty and at worst, a safety hazard – now it is showing its worth as a valuable resource.

Laughter Goes a Long Way in Fighting for Fresher Water

Posted on by robbie

Remember the water fountains at your school growing up? Sure, the pressure was unpredictable. Maybe there was a piece (or five pieces) of gum near the drain. But the water was always there. Today, 25% of California schools don’t meet the state and federal regulations for providing enough free, fresh water, leading kids to less healthy drinking decisions throughout the school day. The comedic activists behind It’s Not Rocket Science want to draw a few laughs on their way to motivating people to action to improve the fresh water options for kids in California schools. This video is hilarious, but the humor also makes an important point about getting active through the PTA, school wellness committees, and student groups to help schools get up to code and install water filtration stations to provide healthy, sustainable water sources for students.

Source: GOOD and Health Happens Here

Why It’s Time to Ditch the Water Bottle

Posted on by robbie

No other country in the world uses as much bottled water as the United States, and it may be turning into a big problem for the public systems that many people (including lower-income families) rely on. Though bottled water come with some upsides, especially convenience, you have the power to solve some big problems with a little decision about how you carry your water.

Baltimore Youth Work Together for an Important Cause

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Blue Water Baltimore is a non-profit organization that works with youth to provide leadership, education, and programs to help restore the quality of Baltimore’s rivers, streams and harbor. The initiative began as five separate Baltimore organizations working to improve their neighborhood water. Through a combined effort they realized they could have a larger impact and work to provide a model for collaborating on a shared vision, not only for the city of Baltimore, but on a national level. Perhaps the greater impact of the organization is that they inspire city residents to become advocates for positive action in their lives, neighborhoods, and the city as a whole. Read more about their mission.