Introduction
Water is essential to life; water is a clear liquid that has no color, taste, or smell. All living things need water to survive. water is composed of chemical elements such as oxygen and hydrogen, water exist in gaseous, liquid and solid state, sources of water include rainwater, water from streams, lakes, rivers, wells and oceans. Water can be used for drinking, washing, domestic purposes, and agricultural purposes.
Getting enough water to drink each day is important to your health, as drinking enough water can prevent dehydration, a condition that can cause unclear thinking, result in mood change, cause your body to overheat, and lead to constipation and kidney stones. Water helps your body keep a normal temperature, it aids in digestion, and water detoxifies, hydrates our skin, delivers nutrients to all our cells and boots our energy level.
Having clean water means being able to avoid exposure to countless diseases, and this involves proper and high sanitary measures. Poor sanitation and unsafe water has claimed millions of life, access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation is vital to health. Areas where potable water are gotten from should be kept clean, water tanks should be washed often, pipes to water should be inspected, proper water drainage and gutters should be made. Water, sanitation and hygiene prevents your family from illness and disease, helps maintain mental health, improves social status, provides better quality of life, and increase focus and productivity.
Water Conservation
But how do we conserve such a valuable asset like water? And what is water conservation.
Water conservation is the practice of using water efficiently to reduce unnecessary or excessive water usage. To conserve water means having policies, strategies and activities to help us sustainably manage the natural resource of fresh water to protect and meet the current and future demand of water, thus avoiding water scarcity.
Types of Water
There are different types of water, such as ground water, surface water, storm water and wastewater. Let’s take a quick look at wastewater.
Waste Water
Waste water is water generated from sinks, showers, baths, washing machine or dishwashers. Wastewater is basically domestic water, and wastewater can be classified into two categories: Blackwater and Greywater. Although they are both wastewaters, they have different levels of contamination, which is why they must be treated differently. Both varieties can be recycled through treatment systems and are often reused for irrigation and cleaning.
Grey Water
Water used for washing your vegetables, water from air condition, water from your laundry are all examples of greywater. Greywater contains lower level of contamination, making it easier to treat and process. Greywater is not potable.
Greywater can also be recycled and is commonly used in irrigation and constructed wetlands as long as no harmful chemicals are present. Greywater that contains food particles can nourish plants (for agricultural purpose), it can also be used for washing and flushing toilets, where water is scare greywater is valuable.
Greywater offers an economical water source for those who do not have access to mains or are unable to collect enough rainwater for indoor use. By reusing treated greywater for toilet you can save approximately 50L of potable water in an average household every day.
Grey water is also spelled as gray water, Grey water is safer to handle, it’s easily treated and reused on site, for toilet flushing, landscape, or crop irrigation, basically it could be used for non-potable uses.
Grey water may likely have some pathogenic content from laundering soiled clothing or cleaning the anal area in the shower or bath.
The application of grey water reuse in urban water systems provides substantial benefits for both the water waste and water system by reducing the amount of water required to be conveyed or treated. Treated water has many uses.
Grey water should not be stored, as that could lead to odor nuisance.
Blackwater
This is the wastewater from bathrooms and toilets that contains al matter and urine, water from kitchen and dishwashers are also considered blackwater due to contamination by pathogens and grease.
Reclaimed/Recycled Water
Water reclamation is the process of converting municipal wastewater or industrial wastewater into water that can be reused for a variety of purposes. Reclaimed water can be reused as urban reuse, agricultural reuse, environmental reuse, industrial reuse and planned potable reuse. To recycle water, different technologies, such as CTC (Concurrent Technologies Corporation) this includes the processes and equipment involved in the active treatment, storage and recycling of water. The process of recycling and reclaiming water would help us conserve water for future use and avoid water scarcity. International Center for Environmental Health and Development (ICEHD) implores you to drink clean water, conserve water and reuse greywater, limit unnecessary use of potable water.
