Water Concerns: Potability, Supply and Deception



The four 'Faucet Approaches' discussed in this TED Talk are as follows:
  1. Harvest storm runoff.
  2. Reuse/recycle waste water.
  3. Water conservation.
  4. Sea water de-salinization.
1.) Storm runoff is handled in cities mainly by building sewer systems to re-route this water so it doesn't flood our buildings and homes, however we could make a huge dent in the water we take from other sources by running this runoff through treatment plants and then letting it sink into the soil before recollecting it, helping the ecosystem and ourselves in the process. Some cities even get enough rainfall to provide the population with water for a year.
2.) We should also start reusing and recycling water more, through reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation, we have the ability to turn almost any waste water into a potable resource. There are also other methods such as rerouting it to a plant where sunshine and the growth of algae helps neutralize it before letting it percolate into the ground again for re-use.
3.) A huge step towards water sustainability is water conservation, not only should we be more efficient and construct beneficial wetlands, this also would help the ecosystem and environment as a whole, rewarding us in many ways.
4.) Although de-salinization is a very energy intensive undertaking, technological bounds have been made in the last few years making it possible to create a full gallon of potable water for 50% of the energy that was used for the same goal in prior endeavors.
While it's quite a ravenous process when it comes to energy consumption, it's still something that we need to work on and improve if we're to change and adapt with the coming climate differences and world events that our communities will have to face.

The next part in this blog post is concerning information learned from this video.

I learned a lot of things from this video, and it honestly shocked me. I've always known that bottled water isn't sustainable, I didn't know to what extent companies went to trick us into buying it and not trusting the water from our own sinks. Apparently bottled water is not only regulated less than tap water, but it also costs about 2000 times more! Most of the time, demand for bottled water is manufacture by making us afraid to consume tap water and seducing us with labels that show pristine naturescapes and mountain springs when a lot of water sold in stores is from the tap anyways.

Also lots of oil and energy is used to produced these disposable bottles, and aren't even recycled when we put them into the proper receptacles; instead they're down-cycled to inferior products that will just be thrown away later. These bottles last for thousands of years if left in nature and create many toxins if they're burned off. While we're led to believe by bottling companies that tap water is polluted, a lot of the time the polluting is done by those same companies in order to make the bottles they so desperately want to sell!

I believe this video should definitely be viewed and shared more. I always considered myself knowledgable on issues regarding safe water, but as it turns out, a lot of rumors and "facts" circulating about drinking water is propagated by companies that have no regard for the environment and just want more money. It doesn't matter if you're an environmentalist or not, this is just pure deception on the company's part and concerns our basic human right to potable water.

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