toilets
pgleick | July 9, 2015by Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley
Debates about water in California, the western U.S., and indeed, worldwide, have traditionally focused on the question of how best to further expand water supply to meet some hypothetical future increase in water demand. And the solution frequently offered is to build massive new infrastructure in the form of dams and reservoirs, drill more groundwater wells, or expand water diversions from ever-more-distant rivers, in order to “grow” the supply available for human use.
“Build more traditional water infrastructure” is increasingly the wrong answer to the…
pgleick | January 16, 2014 Figure 1: Monthly average precipitation showing the seasonality of precipitation in different parts of California, from the iconic California Water Atlas.
California has a “Mediterranean” climate, which means that each year it has a concentrated rainy season, followed by a long temperate and dry period. California’s rainy season typically runs from early October to late March, with very little precipitation outside of these months. (Figure 1 shows the average monthly rainfall for California.) It is now early 2014 and the rains have not come, for the third year in a row. While the …
pgleick | March 13, 2013Here is the second in what will be a series of posts on how little things like changes in technology we take for granted, or simple behaviors, can have a big impact on water use. The first looked at turning off the water when you brush your teeth: a seemingly trivial thing. It turned out not to be so trivial. (I will, on occasion, also blog about the “not so little” things like fundamental changes in our agricultural systems, dietary choices, and industrial processes.)
The Pacific Institute has done extensive and groundbreaking research over the past 25 years on a wide range of water, climate…
tsmith | February 13, 2013Readers may be familiar with Matt Damon's charity work with water.org, an organization he co-founded. Water.org seeks to raise awareness of the lack of clean water by almost a billion people on earth, and lack of toilets by almost 2.5 billion--and more importantly, they work to remedy that situation by providing sustainable, local solutions. His new video brings awareness in a rather unorthodox manner: he's refusing to go to the bathroom until everyone on earth has access to clean water and toilets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jQCqNop3CIg