Water Recycling Challenges

Why do we need to recycle water? Because we don't generate much new water. Chemically the process of generating water, which is basically taking hydrogen and oxygen and burning them to produce water, is not a process that happens a lot anymore. So in terms of our total volume of water in the world, yes it is changing, but it's not changing significantly relative to the rate at which we are using or demand fresh new water. Now there are a lot of different areas of technology involved in water recycling, and we are later in the interview going to get to industrial use and the reclamation of sewerage. What about in the home at the moment; what sort of technology is being utilized in the home when we talk about water recycling? Well very little on average. Typically in a modern home, we turn on the tap, we take a glass of water, we probably in turning on that tap flush ten glasses of water down the sink. We take a shower, we use fresh water, we do a whole range of things, and there is nominally very little recycling of that. It goes down the drain and it goes off to a wastewater treatment plant. There is actually very, very little recycling at a local level. People don't actually say well I'm now going to take the water I just used, put it through a sophisticated process and reuse it and have a closed loop. It's not a closed loop in the home. Recycling water is crucial as new water generation is limited. The global water supply changes minimally compared to our consumption rates. In homes, water recycling technology is rarely utilized; typically, fresh water is used without efficient recycling, leading to significant waste. Most used water is sent to treatment facilities, lacking a closed-loop system for reuse.