Tips on conserving, reusing and recycling graywater at home

The alternative energy movement has gotten a lot of attention and followers lately, especially with the growing concern about green house gases and global warming. While the alternative energy movement is important, there is another equally important movement afoot that deserves attention: the recycling of water, or more accurately, greywater reuse.

Greywater is the waste water generated from laundry or bathing that can be recycled for uses in such things as landscape watering. The water used in toilets and the kitchen, however, cannot be recycled because it contains dangerous pathogens. This water is called black water.

Why is it important to recycle water? According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American household uses 400 gallons of fresh water a day. To give you a better idea of how someone can use that much water, consider this. In an article on greywater reuse in the 2010 edition of the Farmer's Almanac by Jim Kneiszel, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection reported that 35 percent of household water is used for showers and baths, 30 percent for flushing toilets, 20 percent in laundry, 10 percent in food preparation, cleanup, and drinking water, and 5 percent for household cleaning. Most of that water goes straight to the sewers without being recycled.

One of the easiest ways to recycle water is to rout bathwater into toilet tanks, where it can be used once more before becoming sewage, or black water. Another way to reuse water, according to the article in the Farmer's Almanac, is to rout it out of the house into drip irrigation for lawns and garden plants that will not be harmed by soups or other pollutants in the water.

Because water is becoming scarce and the price of water is rising, many companies are trying to create simple retrofit systems that will route bathwater through a filter to a tank, which, Kneiszel writes, is "similar to the size of a water softener system where [the water] is treated with chlorine to neutralize odor-causing bacteria before being sent to toilet tanks for reuse."

A Canadian company called Brac Systems, markets a retrofit system for $2,000 ($5,000 with professional installation). The company claims that this unit reduces water usage for a family of four by 20,000 gallons per year. Dennis Ysar, president of Brac Systems, predicts that due to population growth and a decrease in the availability of clean water, greywater reuse systems will be mandated throughout America by 2020.

In addition to companies marketing retrofit systems for the recycling of graywater, architects and builders are working on building whole-house grey water systems. Houses that have been built with whole-hosue grey water systems, according to Kneiszel, have reduced their water usage by 25-40 percent over several years of monitoring. In such houses, greywater goes through a sand filter before being piped outside for use in landscape watering. Unfortunately, the whole-house greywater system requires a lot of maintenance. It is also very pricey.

According to some estimates the average United States monthly water bill is $50 which means that it will take over three and a half years to recoup a Brac system, and that's if you install it yourself! The return on investment for other systems, such as the whole house gray water system mentioned above, can be upwards of ten years.

While the reuse of greywater sounds like a great way to cut down on water use and water bills, Kneiszel writes that, "health officials have been reluctant to approve retrofitting greywater recycling systems, because of the danger of bacteria-laden greywater somehow getting into the drinking water." To prevent this, health officials have required that special purple-colored pipes be installed to handle greywater. They also require the addition of blue dyes to greywater to differentiate it from clean water.

It appears that at the time being, greywater reuse requires a lot of maintenance and money to be truly beneficial. While most people would want to cut down on water bills by decreasing their water use, they are reluctant to do so if it requires too much work or too much money. Even so, anyone can save a few gallons of water by scooping bathwater into their toilet tank or by taking five minute showers instead of ten minute showers (10 minute showers can use up to 42 gallons of water). The Farmer's Alamanc has the following suggestions for conserving water:

• Wash only full loads in your dishwasher or washing machine
• Shut the water off when brushing your teeth, shaving, or rising dishes (using a modern dishwashing machine can actually use quite a bit less water than washing by hand but may use more electricity)
• Collect rainwater in buckets for reuse in gardens
• Take showers, not baths. If you take a bath, reuse the bathwater
• Fix all leaks
• Defrost food overnight in the refrigerator or in your microwave
• Use leftover water in bottles to water plants or pets