The energy cost of water

I have long been pondering the carbon footprint of the tap water we so take for granted.  Water is heavy, viscous stuff, and it takes a lot of energy to collect, deliver, and process.

Recently I came across a figure: running a tap for 5 minutes represents the same power consumption as running a 60 watt bulb for 14 hours. Unfortunately I have lost the source for that.

But today I get a figure from the Energy Saving Trust. "The energy needed to treat and pump mains water to our homes, and to collect and treat waste water from the sewage network, is responsible for nearly 1% of the UK's annual greenhouse gas emissions."

OK. The UK Carbon Footprint Project says: The UK's carbon footprint is over 500* million tonnes of CO2 per year. 1% of 500 is 5, so the embodied CO2 in our annual water is 5,000,000 tonnes, right? or 5 trillion grammes? (Correct me if I'm wrong, I am poor at sums).

Now, Water UK says "Each day the UK water industry collects, treats and then supplies more than 17 billion litres of high quality water to domestic and commercial customers and then collects and treats over 16 billion litres of the resulting wastewaters, returning it safely to the environment."

So 33,000,000,000 litres a day, or 12,012,000,000,000 litres a year. Divide CO2 in grammes  by volume of water in litres to get number of grammes of CO2 per litre, right?

 5,000,000,000,000
_______________
12,012,000,000,000
= 0.42 grammes CO2 per litre.

In fact, 1 litre of tap water is about twice that, 0.8 grammes CO2, say, since once it's out of the tap, most of it has to be dealt with as sewage. Of course, sewage also  picks up some rain water runoff.

I should now go and check this against the thing of 5 minutes tap run = 14 hours of a 60watt bulb, but I need to go and have a little lie down after all this calculation.

Anyway, it all goes to prove that we shouldn't poo in our drinking water.

Composting toilets are the future.

As a change from politics, my big news is that yesterday I had the pleasure of emptying my first bucket of poo+sawdust into my new Humanure Hacienda (compost pile to the uninitiated).

Sorry there are no pictures, as my Blogger has lost the picture uploading link. It would have shown my nice shiny carefully made and varnished wooden thunderbox with re-used toilet lid, that contains one 5-gallon plastic bucket.

It couldn't be simpler. You shit in the bucket, and cover each offering with sawdust. All you can detect, once covered, is a faint odour of fresh varnish.

Full buckets are emptied into a normal compost heap which will go theromophilic (hot) due to bacteria already in the poo, and the carbon nitrogen balance of the excrement and the sawdust.

Composting means that all pathogenic bacteria, viruses and worms are destroyed. Most are gone within days or weeks, but we leave it for a year to be sure.

Composting toilets are the future. Growing population and consumerist lifestyles are putting drinking water availability at under pressure.


In view of this it makes no sense whatsoever to shit into our drinking water.
IsraelPalestine needs to co-operate on their water management issues, with cross community work on saving, harvesting and storing water.

Joe Jenkins is The Man.