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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."
I'll think you'll find that's due to the fact there IS NO WATER in the nearby creek. You can thank the Snowy Mountains Hydro project for that one.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
SHITBALL FIGHT!!!!!!! heh heh......doesn't have the same ring.....
"even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste.
A typical knee-jerk reaction that nearly all of us have, myself included. But perhaps quite an unfair one.
This is going to seem a little off-topic. Bear with me!
We seem to be quite often short of water these days, and since we don't have a lot of new water catchment possibilities, it would seem that it can only get worse as the population increases.
Saving water seems to be the key here. Not only through more efficient appliances, but also through multiple uses of our water. How much sense does it make to be flushing our toilets with drinking water?
Some houses already capture "grey water" and use it for tasks where drinking water is not required. Obviously there's some filtering required. I've heard of other projects which are completely water self-sufficient. Yes, you end up boiling your potatoes in recycled piss!
Pretty revulsive to us today, but who knows? Maybe our grandkids will find it completely normal.
If they are going to go through this (no doubt) expensive cleansing process to put this water on the mountain, it must cost them a SHITLOAD to use fresh water to make the snow.
Actually the term is now "SNOWLOAD".
Avogadro, urine and eternal recycling
:-)
A calculation of what would happen if we'd dilute all the urine from one days urination of the world population into all the 1.4 billion trillions litres water on earth. Yes, thank god for the internet putting questions like these into rest.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Back in the early 90's my dad was on some summer program where professors would go and do work for NASA and then during the year be the regular profs that they were.
He was an analytical chemistry professor and then for NASA worked on the water filtration system for the Space Station.
The basic concept being that water is heavy at 8lbs/gal and so if they can limit how much they take up, they can use that saved weight towards carrying something else.
So they wanted to bring up a small fixed amount and then recycle out the waste - so when you took a leak, it would recover that and clean it out (with very similar methods to this article interestingly enough), and then... according to my dad - was usually cleaner than the water they brought on.
I was always puzzled at why they didn't just bring on cleaner water - but I suppose he was also hinting at the astronauts bringing some inside themselves as well... don't know.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar