Don't Eat The White Snow Either

loteck writes "An interesting article about an Australian ski resort that is converting human waste into freshly driven snow. The waste is converted "through a three-step purifying process of UV light filtration, ozonation and ultra-filtration", and they say it's "even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste."

Comments

Re:Creek?

[chamenos]

water purified from human waste can actually be cleaner than water purified through normal means. its just the idea that irks most people. singapore has started introducing water that is "reclaimed" from sewage for consumption. the purity of the water exceeded the standard set by the world health organization by quite a far margin. if i'm not wrong some places in america already use water reclaimed from sewage for consumption, so its not as if this is a completely new concept.

Re:If you drink out of the river...

[ackthpt]

and they say it's "even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste."

the concept of water purified through man-made means, as opposed to nature which most people are more used to. in singapore's case, they're currently pumping the purified water into reservoirs, just to let it sit in the open so the birds and fish can crap into it and let nature do a bit of its thing, before purifying it again to pump into the water supply. all this, just to satisfy the odd inhibitions that a lot of people have to consuming purified sewage. weak-minded people really do bother me sometimes.

Don't be so hasty to cast stones. Clearly there is a double standard, born of ignorance on the part of many. A small ski resort I visited used to pump icky water from a swamp and make snow from it. You could tell because the air smelled terrible when they were doing it and the snow had a yellowish tinge from algae. However, look at what advertising has told the consumer:

Beer from the land of sky blue waters (can you name it? :-)

Mountain spring water (yeah, right... all 50 zillion gallons of it every day, that's no spring it's a river, in Cal. it's probably pumped from Colorado or Owens River, read Cadillac Desert)

Then there's the simple test of putting two glasses of water in front of someone, filtered from the town well and recovered water. Don't tell them before they taste test, then see if they make a face and call a lawyer once you've explained one came from recovered water.

People have been trained, since before the Bible to avoid water touched by human waste, because bacteria and fungi which cause some pretty bad aflictions grow in it. That was wisdom, it may seem misguided, until you run a marketing campaign to change people's opinion, then catch the local water filtration manager cutting corners. It's probably happening in your town and you don't even know it.

Me, I put a filter on my drinking water, for whatever good it does. Which it does to some small noticable degree.

Water is getting poorer in quality and reuse isn't a new concept, but reuse is growing and people will need to accept it, because alternatives (desalination, for example) can be very expensive.