LeakBird

On the blue planet, and especially in the industrialized world, water is seemingly everywhere. At the turn of the faucet or the flush of a toilet, our control over our water supply is misleadingly large.

Although the planet is covered in more than 70 percent of the stuff, only three percent of it is actually drinkable — a percentage we are continually diminishing with pollution from our sewer, agricultural and industrial systems.

And even though personal anti-wasting steps (turning off the water, taking shorter showers, etc.) are in order and necessary, these measures alone will not be enough to mitigate massive global water depletion.

What’s needed, argues Editor at Large for Sunset magazine Allison Arieff, in her article Blue Is the New Green, is a global effort to make use of water multiple times over. Her top conservation and reuse solutions, which include living roofs, living walls, greywater and rainwater harvesting, are ideas that we often champion. She provides a quick history of each, and discusses how they’ve transitioned from little-understood fringe details to stylish, practical and tested systems in mainstream building markets. It’s refreshing to see worldchanging design solutions like these turn up so prominently in mainstream discussion:

Living Roofs Living (or “green”) roofs are one of several integrated water management systems. Vegetation is ideal for managing water, and provides benefits that are otherwise hard to capture. Green roofs have overcome their once-ingrained association with ’70s-style earth architecture, thanks to improved technology, better aesthetics and increased building incentive programs like tax abatements (New York approved such a program back in August; 55,000 new square feet of green roofs were installed last year alone in cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.).

Greywater Much less exotic but far easier to implement are greywater systems. Grey water describes water post-shower, -dishwasher or -laundry. Its use will reduce demand as well as sewer-system loads and the amount we pay for our water bills. A simple system of tubing allows one to repurpose this water for landscape watering (which, not incidentally, accounts for 50 percent of home water use in most districts.) So complex is the bureaucracy to install such systems that an organization called Greywater Guerrillas exists to offer DIY advice and workshops on sustainable water infrastructure to the public.

Rainwater Harvesting Rainwater harvesting requires little more than a few barrels. For every 1,000-square-foot catchment area, one inch of rainfall can result in 600 gallons of rainwater, which can be used primarily for irrigation, toilet flushing and fire safety. A recent product launch may help transform rainwater collection into high design: minimalist, olive-toned Rainwater HOG collection tanks are now sold at modern furniture emporium Design Within Reach.

(Original Article Here)