Water on the brain

Detail from a mural at Bridgepoint Health,
on the edge of the Don River, Canada's most polluted river.
Photo by Craig Saunders

I've been thinking about water lately. Every time I shower, or pull the plug on my son's bath, I think about all the water going down the drain. In a week, hundreds of gallons of fairly clean greywater flows from my house into the city's wastewater system. It doesn't need to.

My city has more than 9,000 kilometres of sewers connecting the homes of a few million people. The wastewater generally flows downhill to the lake, but sometimes must be pumped uphill at one of 45 pumping stations. The more we flush, the more electricity gets used to pump that waste. Then there's a 10.5-hour treatment process at the end.

That process takes a lot of energy. more than 190 million kilowatthours. Water systems are one of the biggest parts of any city's energy bill, and because of that, one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. There's a lot a city can do, from replacing leaky old pipes to installing biogas systems to use some of the energy stored in all that poop-filled water. Homeowners can fix leaky faucets, take showers instead of baths, and really, do you need to take a full shower every day? Wouldn't a sponge bath in the sink (using just a few litres of water) suffice some days?

Every time I pull the plug on the bathtub, I think about all that water going down the drain. It's good water, with quite a few nutrients in it thanks to the soap. Then I think about my garden, a few hundred square feet of vegetables (well, it will be once the snow melts). Why not use the greywater on the garden?

I'm happy to take buckets out to the garden. I used to do this in London. But my garden paths are dirty, and I'd have to walk back and forth across the carpet in my bedroom countless times. The obvious solution is some sort of a water barrel on the back porch. Then I could carry buckets to fill it, then go outside and do the watering without tracking dirt throughout the house.

But where to get a suitable barrel? I was wondering about this, and today it came to me. The city just delivered new garbage bins. We have to use these official bins if we want our rubbish collected. That means the big, old plastic bin we had been using is just sitting at the side of the house. If the upstairs neighbours don't object, I'll put it on the back deck and use it for greywater. Now I just need to figure out some sort of spigot system for the bottom.

Then I'll have a great greywatering system for my garden. My veg will love it, it will reduce the amount of relatively clean water the city will have to treat, and it will reduce the amount of water they need to pump into the system, since I'll be using less municipal water for the garden. A win-win-win situation.

Now I just have to wait until the snow melts.

Green amidst the white

Readers might have noticed an absence of tips on having a "Green Christmas" on this blog. That was partly an oversight (I got busy and the holiday sort of snuck up on me) and partly deliberate. There are a lot of sites out there offering advice on minimizing the harm from your celebrations, and really, the best thing to do is to consume less of the cheap plastic trinketry we ship by the container load every year at this time.

But I'm no Scrooge. I'm fond of this holiday and really enjoy spending time with my family. I have a tree in my house, and am fully cognizant of how bizarre this practice must seem to other cultures. The lights on it are the new LED variety, and the two strings it took to decorate the tree draw a total of 8 watts. That's less than the compact fluorescent in the lamp on the other side of the couch, and plenty to navigate the room during these long winter nights.

My main plan this year is for minimal travel. I'm going to make one trip to be with family and stay for a few days. No running around this year. Speaking of family, some of the members of my family have great ideas for the holidays. For some good holiday blog posts and great ideas, I suggest visiting My Web of Life, the personal blog of Jenni Boles. Like her, I've made decorations with my son and done all sorts of unimaginably wholesome things. But unlike me, Jenni has three kids and a husband all competing for her attention. And, together with her husband Steve (Full Disclosure: he's my cousin), she is also working on launching their new business, Kuzuka.com, which will offer people a choice of carbon offsets, much in the same way that we buy airline tickets today through sites like expedia.

This can be a difficult time of year for environmentalists. As you can see from the above photo, taking my compost out will require slogging through a couple feet of snow. The car-free life is challenged by the weather (it was -12 C when I left this morning). And there's no opportunity to connect with the earth through gardening, since the ground is frozen solid.

But I take inspiration from my composter, which continues to generate enough heat to keep converting my kitchen scraps into rich soil. Besides, with a warm parka, I'm comfortable in all but the most inclement of weather. The snow is beautiful, and it's also the season for tobogganing and cross-country skiing. So get out there, enjoy the winter, and turn down the heat so you've got an excuse to snuggle up under a blanket with a good book.

Green Gorilla

Mountaintop removal mining from a Southwings flight.
Photo © Jim Motavalli

Canadian journalist Peter Fairley started my day the right way by sending over a link to his latest blog post. Coal mining and electrical generation aren't exclusively tenant issues, but they are reasons why we make the changes to our homes and lifestyles that we do.

The video he blogged is an amusing piece of propaganda. While I'm not big on having a mystical shaman character as the source of wisdom, the video is an entertaining introduction to the effect coal mining is having in many parts of the United States.

For context, the video follows close on the heels of a much more entertaining video made public by the Natural Resources Defense Council. This video is excerpts from a speech delivered by Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth-largest coal producer in the U.S. He certainly comes across as a zealot in these clips, and I somehow doubt that his argument becomes any firmer when one hears the speech in its entirety. However, he's welcome to send it to me so that I can learn and revise my opinion. After all, wise people do change their position as information becomes available. But some of his statements dont' give me much hope that there's more substance to his pro-coal rant... such as his argument that the U.S. shouldn't be a leader on environmental issues because nobody has followed. He points to China as an example. He fails to point to all the other countries that have followed the lead of the United States (or lead the United States), including Canada and much of Europe.

I live in Ontario, Canada. I'm a long way from the mountaintop removal problems. Near my home, most of the massive mines are ripping away the Niagara Escarpment for limestone. I don't see coal mines very often. Jim Motavalli wrote an interesting piece in E Magazine a couple years back on mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Jim gave me permission to use the photo which is at the top of this page. Right now, E's archives are available to subscribers only, but both Jim and the magazine's editor, Brita Belli, very graciously gave permission for the text to be posted. It's hosted on my site, and you can access it here. If you enjoy it, then please consider subscribing to E.

Despite plenty of rivers and big nuclear stations, and an increasing number of wind turbines, Ontario is still heavily dependent on coal. According to the provincial energy ministry, about 18 percent of our elecricity came from coal in 2007. As I write this, 29,527 MW are being produced in Ontario. Based on the posted mix, that would mean more than 5000 MW from coal.

I think I'll go and make sure the lights are turned off upstairs.