Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Water
sugnim
I was just thinking about how much water use actually comes with a glass of water while I'm at work. I try to stay hydrated, and I drink a lot of water at work. It occurred to me that if I drink 8 oz. of water, I'm actually consuming much more water than that. Not ingesting it, but consuming it. 8 oz to drink, a few gallons to flush when it makes its way out, maybe half a gallon or so to wash my hands, and then maybe half a gallon or so to wash the glass at the end of the day. These are all just estimates of course, but I never stopped to think that something like a little glass of water actually uses multiple gallons of water.
I don't want to stop drinking water, obviously, but I don't want to waste it either. And I can't do the whole "if it's yellow, just stay mellow" thing at the office. Honestly, I'd gag if my co-workers did that. I can't help thinking there must be some better way to go about this, so that when I drink a glass of water, I'm consuming just that glass, or close to it.
I don't really have a question. I'm just rambling. Any thoughts?
Assuming your office toilets and sink are connected to the local muni wastewater treatment plant, it's not like the water flushed or drained is being totally "wasted". It's treated and put back into whatever body of water the effluent is connected to. In some cases (like orange county) it's even recycled to drinking water.
And a half gallon of water to wash a glass of water seems excessive. A quick rinse would probably be alright.
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and roguesWe're on the road to nowhere, let's find out where it goes
For folks who get queasy about recycled drinking water, most everyone is drinking the recycled water of the city upriver anyway. Our office has no flush urinals in men's bathrooms.
Labrat
Everyone drinks recycled water.
The variable is the time since it was last expelled from an organism, and if it has gone through an evaporation/rain phase.
5K 20:23 (Vdot 48.7) 9/9/17
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Who repeatedly uses and washes a glass at work? Get a larger container and rinse quickly once every other day or so.
this, same with a coffee mug.
Get off my porch
not bad for mile 25
Everyone drinks recycled water. The variable is the time since it was last expelled from an organism, and if it has gone through an evaporation/rain phase.
Yes, it's not a question of whether it's been recycled, but how.
You wash your hands with 1/2 gallon of water every time you drink a glass of water? You really wash your 'glass' every day? No wonder we have water supply issues if everyone is wasting this much drinking water.
I've noted many runners at races are very environmentally conscious and reduce water waste to zero. You can easily spot them peeing on lawns, trees and bushes.
Yep, we use water glasses at my office. It's a law firm. I don't drink coffee, but my glass goes into the dishwasher each evening. Also, as I said, these are all estimates. I've never actually measured the amount of water I use when I wash my hands. Have you?
Our town does not use recycled water. We have a natural aquifer that runs below us. Some people pull directly from that via a well, and some are connected to city water which pulls from there. The water that goes down our drains goes to a water treatment plant where it it cleaned and then it goes to one of the rivers that runs through our town. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, all water has been constantly recycled through the water table over the millennia, but that's a different subject.
We don't actually have water supply issues where I live, and we aren't in a drought, but I was just thinking about the amount of water that actually goes into the drinking of a glass of water. No matter what receptacle you drink from, or how often you wash your hands, you've got to admit, way more that 8 oz. goes into a glass of water.
Yep, we use water glasses at my office. It's a law firm.
Ah. Good point. I work at a blue collar job so we all just drink out of old shoes.
runktrun
Sometimes, when I'm feeling really fancy and a shoe just won't do, I...bring my own water bottle and refill it!
BOOM.
Not running for my health, but in spite of it.
I have a drink bottle from the LBS sat on my desk at work right now.
Way bigger than 8 oz though.
Good Bad & The Monkey
http://www.eater.com/drinks/2015/4/7/8360993/how-las-only-water-sommelier-is-changing-the-way-people-taste-h20
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
We use water, but don't use it up. Nothing we do in our normal everyday lives creates or destroys water. We just change where it is, or what's in it. Where I live, we use surface water that has been artificially impounded by dam. Then it gets treated, and used by us, and treated again, and goes back into the same stream, just further downstream. Then it goes into a river, and other communities use that water. This doesn't count the water that evaporates, or sinks back into an aquifer, or somehow makes it out of our watershed.
All in all, we are not "running out of water" on earth. But we have a tendency to take that water from places where it is easy to get, and requires little treatment (aquifers, clear-water lakes and reservoirs) and then we put that water into places from which it seems distasteful to re-acquire (sewage) or that requires expensive or energy intensive treatment (surface runoff goes to ocean water). And sometimes we just plain stick stuff in the water that is difficult to get out. But the water is still there. The resource we are wasting is not the water we use, it is the labor and energy and material it takes to extract that water from wherever, clean out the bugs and the metals and organic compounds, and deliver it to wherever.
Sometimes I think the future of water and humanity is to store and treat the rainwater that falls on our facilities, and then micro-treat it again before discharging to stream. It will have come full circle.