They may degrade rather quickly in sea water. And they release dangerous chemicals like BPA as they do so.
Disneyland Resort, for example, has installed a Thermal Energy Storage tank that chills water overnight to help cool the resort's buildings.
In one area that I'm watching closely, water management, Disney has a rather vague goal right now to minimize water use.
The company suggests that a more specific water conservation plan will be in place by the end of 2012.
For example, it reclaims about 6 million gallons of water daily at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Moreover, in the past year, the Disney Cruise Line has improved the water efficiency in its laundry operations by more than 20 percent by installing new technology
then rinsed off with water. They dissolve into a with the addition of water they help clean the fruit.
Their parent company Amron Experimental is currently seeking investors to help bring the new stickers to market. via PSFK Image:
the nation's largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used ones, is in hot water today after the company chose to remove a standard safety feature--side-curtain airbags--from thousands of Chevrolet Impala fleet vehicles
Eighty percent of the reservoir water is used in farming. In fact, since the 1980s--which happen to be the start of the modern industrialization of Spain--all drought trends have intensified.
because they need less water. In Murcia, research was conducted to see if organic fertilizers and biofertilizers could enhance the growth of the Santa rosa plum.
Fertilizer giant Scotts Miracle-Gro redefines healthy lawn to prevent water pollutionhealthy lawns and gardens improve infiltration,
reduce runoff and filter the water. But now, a company that for years has promoted healthy lawns by selling products containing phosphorus has changed its Tune in March,
Actually, one of the largest sources of phosphorus into waters comes from human waste sewage treatment plants.
It s more water soluble. But if there s too much nitrogen, you re in danger of having it running off.
and can survive in frigid waters. Critics have dubbed it Frankenfish. Politicians from Alaska, Oregon and Washington, who feel their wild salmon fisheries would be threatened by this new breed,
says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer watchdog group Food and Water Watch, just one of the 300 groups that oppose the fish.
and adds a splash of water. Swirl, sniff, sip. This time, he doesn't spit.
It's nice with water he says. It cools that burn and keeps the flavors nice and strong.
To ensure an exact result each time, the device brews according to finely tuned specifications such as temperature, stir rate, pressure and coffee to water ratio.
and water as companies use land for biofuel feedstocks rather than for food crops, it notes.
Biofuel proponents say they can grow with relatively little water and in some cases on poor soil that would not sustain food crops.
GE Water sustainability chief Jeff Fulgham: We need a price on waterwhy doesn't water get more attention?
According to Jeff Fulgham, it's because it's available on demand virtually everywhere--from taps to toilets to showers and sinks.
But as the newly-appointed chief sustainability officer of GE Power and Water--as well as the division's Ecomagination leader--Fulgham knows better.
The reality is that the world is quickly running out of water --and if we don't do anything about it,
I spoke to Fulgham from his office in Trevose, Penn. about why water needs more marketing
How did you end up in the water business? JF: I've been in the space my whole career, about 25 years.
and spent a lot of time with power as it relates to water. I arrived to GE
You say that water is a major challenge going forward. What's going on? JF: The path that we're on is a little scary right now.
The challenges the world faces with water falls into three buckets: quantity, quality and the energy consumption related to it.
From a quantity standpoint, we've reached a point globally where the demand for fresh water is exceeding the global supply.
The world can't provide enough water to meet our insatiable demand. At GE, we're focused on reducing the demand and increasing supply.
First we work with our industrial partners to optimize water use. The industry uses 20 percent of the world's water supply;
in the U s.,it's 46 percent; in China, it's 25 percent; India is only about 5 percent.
Second, we look at other sources of water: municipal wastewater reuse, lower-grade sources of water that we can clean up.
Third, at the discharge side, it's all about how we can reduce the amount of effluent going downstream.
It's the Old boy Scout thing: leave it better than you found it. We have a lot of technologies around desalination that reduce the cost,
take the energy cost out--about 50 percent of the cost of running a desal plant is energy
nastiest wastewaters in the world and clean those up for reuse, instead of eliminating it from the hydrological cycle completely.
industrial demand--all of those things are going to put more pressure on the water supply. Smartplanet: You said that wastewater is eliminated often from the hydrological cycle.
What do you mean? JF: Wastewater is, unfortunately, on the rise. Some of the less conventional fuels used right now...
take natural gas. In New york and Pennsylvania, we're sitting on one of the greatest shale gas reserves in the world.
They drive a lot of water into the ground, which breaks the shale and frees the gas bubbles up.
What comes up is really nasty wastewater combined with gas. They separate the gas, and the wastewater is really nasty stuff.
The way to get rid of it is put it in a really giant evaporation pond, or put it in a disposal well--states like Texas
Here we are in a water-stressed environment and getting rid of our most precious resource.
Now, we're able to extract contaminants from the wastewater--for example salt, which can then be used for road salt here in the Northeast.
but it taints our water supply. Ideally, you take the wastewater stream, reuse it and fracture the next well.
That's one way we can continue to conserve water. The low-hanging fruit is,
let's reduce the amount of consumption. The higher fruit is changing the ways you run your plant.
When does water begin to make business sense? JF: I think about these enablers to get the tailwinds to make things happen.
how are we able to take these really challenging waters and treat them for reuse instead of just dumping them?
How do I reduce the cost of making clean water? It costs less every month, every year.
The other challenge is that water is thought of as free. It's incredibly cheap. Water has to be priced relative to its value,
and we are not there. In many places in the world where water is most scarce,
there are strong subsidies to make it inexpensive. In the city of New york, water commissioner Kathryn Garcia has reduced consumption by 16 percent.
Unfortunately, her revenues then dropped 16 percent. Many cities have tiered a pricing structure where it actually gets cheaper as it gets used.
One of the things that works against us is that with water being essentially free or cheap,
Some municipalities are actually paying industrial partners to take that water so they don't have to pump
The biggest headwind we see is just this wacky pricing of water. There's a change underway,
Who are the worst culprits of water usage? JF: Of the big volume users, the power industry is by far the biggest volume user.
In the U s.,49 percent of the water used in the industrial market goes to generate power for thermal power plants:
A big power plant uses a boatload of water. The primary use is to cool those processes--the big hyperbolic cooling towers.
It takes about 5 million gallons a day of water for a 1, 000 megawatt power plant.
You can use river water, certainly well water, but when you start getting into lower grade water,
it becomes a bit of a challenge. The power industry has become the most aggressive in innovative applications of water,
because they use so much. Smartplanet: Why is there such water demand from power plants? Can't they reuse it?
JF: Often what happens is the water that leaves the plant is less than what's brought in--a lot evaporates into the air--so there isn't as much at the end of the plant as there is at the beginning of the plant,
so they're taking new freshwater instead. So we're saying, let's take discharge from another plant and use it here.
If there are 100 gallons of water in the world, 20 goes to industry, 70 goes to agriculture,
and how they can be more efficient in using water. With agriculture if you think about a farmer today,
typically they're getting their water free or highly subsidized. With 70 percent of the world's water supply going to irrigation,
the cheapest source of water is going to our farmers. They have the lion's share of water rights.
With low-flow irrigation and other off-the-shelf devices, we're reducing it by 50 to 70 percent.
You could reduce the world's water consumption by 50 percent by addressing these markets.
they can irrigate them with brackish or partial saltwater. Smartplanet: Why can't we use brackish water for cooling purposes?
JF: Well it's really tough on metal. If you bring diluted saltwater in, you start corroding everything.
There are systems designed for seawater, but...Smartplanet: Shouldn't we mandate using such systems? JF:
Where it's possible, sure. For island nations, absolutely. And there are a lot of plants in the U s. on the sea taking advantage of that.
But there's also the environmental concern in putting warmer water back into the ocean--the long-term fate of the ecology of the ocean.
and one of the things we're getting to in the House of representatives is a potential tax-credit for water reuse.
we see water reuse incentives. Smartplanet: does need water higher visibility and awareness? JF: It's a lot of ground-level effort.
We see interest where it's a problem: Brazil isn't very interested; California is interested very.
If you go to where water is scarce and a problem, there's interest. One thing needed is incentives;
There exists a state-level policy that prohibits the reuse of wastewater for agriculture --but we didn't have the technology then to do so safely.
so that even a state like New mexico can reuse water. The policies were put in place for good reason,
because we didn't want untreated municipal wastewater in our lettuce. Now we have technologies to ensure those things don't happen.
How bad is the U s. water infrastructure? JF: Today, on average, roughly 44 percent of municipality's water is considered non-revenue generating.
They produce it but don't get paid for it. Twenty-five percent is from leaks, breaks--it just doesn't get to the end.
purification and wastewater treatment. Today, we don't play a lot there in the middle, in the pipe business.
like the grid, we will see a rise into smaller distributed wastewater systems, serving 1,
500 homes instead of pumping the water out into big plants to be treated. People underestimate the amount of energy that it takes to make
and pump water. California's the highest--19 percent of their energy bill goes to that.
There's a smart grid out there for water, somewhere. A perfect example is the Solaire building in the Battery park area of New york city.
That building has a wastewater treatment plant in the basement, and they reuse 98 percent of their water.
There are two sets of pipes--a small one brings water to the building's occupants,
and a big one brings wastewater from laundry and all that. It's very difficult to retrofit an existing building.
One of the challenges we face is the retrofit component. Smartplanet: Let's talk about your job as chief sustainability officer for GE Water.
What's on your desk right now? JF: My responsibility is for the water and process technologies business.
And I expand into our broader power business. I'm kind of a test case--the one chief sustainability guy within GE to see
Water is less visible as a sustainable resource. We wanted one person to be out there.
treat our wastewater. At a couple of our sites, we're paying to dispose our wastewater off-site.
Now we're looking at a project to treat our own waste--we're working on using our own membrane technology.
and work with the top 100 water consumers and we're deploying our GE Water technology into other GE sites.
At our nuclear plant in Wilmington, North carolina we're doing water treatment there. Our aircraft engines plant in Cincinnati.
A healthcare facility in Europe. Now we have a cool in-house system where we track
and monitor water consumption across the portfolio. It's been used for energy for a number of years
but now it's been expanded for water. Smartplanet: That's huge. One location to see water consumption for all your facilities?
JF: Laughs Yeah, I kind of take it for granted when I'm traveling around the world.
A final component is our Water for Humanity project, which isn't quite philanthropy. From a CSR standpoint, our GE Foundation donates hundreds of million of dollars.
Such as water kiosks, a clean water system for a local village rather than the contaminated water supply they use today.
There are 25,000 NGOS dabbling in the water business. We've got an opportunity because of our scale to make an impact
The Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities based in North carolina is using Geographic Information systems (GIS) data to map available infrastructure against the racial characteristics of different neighborhoods in the United states. The organization studies everything from water
The Cedar Group Institute tied together geo-coded data from public sources with government census data to show that black neighborhoods were deliberately being denied access to city water service.
and East Muskingum Water Authority. The judge found the analysis compelling. In 2008, he awarded the plaintiffs $10. 9 million,
and today residents finally have service that doesn't require pumping water from a cistern.
to be put to use in water bottles, plasticware and other applications. The company, which already manufactures plastic from corn, potatoes,
The Philadelphia Water Department exhibit details efforts to unearth urban streams, which were buried in the 1800s to minimize health risks from polluted water.
Now that raw sewage is dumped no longer into the river and laws limit industrial water pollution, the city is working to bring back miles of streams,
creating a habitat for animals and better quality water for residents. Scientists are recreating natural elements, such as riffles and pools,
to slow down water when it enters streams. Once the flow is restored, native plants and trees will be added  around the banks to complete the stream habitat.
Ground zero in the energy-water nexusthe oil and gas producing countries of the Middle east may be sitting pretty in fossil fuels,
but they have an urgent problem with their water supply. That was the focus of the International Water Summit held in conjunction with the World Future Energy Summit in Abu dhabi three weeks ago,
which I attended at the invitation and on the dime of Masdar. The slogan of the conference was Bringing the water-energy nexus to life, a topic
I last covered in August. The availability of potable water is one of the most pressing issues in the world
particularly in the Gulf region where water production is a costly and energy-intensive process, explained Dr. Sultan al-Jaber, managing director and CEO of Masdar City.
The numbers (provided by ADWEC, aka Abu dhabi Water and Electricity Company) are frightening. Abu dhabi's water demand has doubled more than over the past 10 years as tall gleaming glass buildings leapt out of the sand across the United arab emirates (UAE.
Consumption is rising even faster than electricity demand, which is growing at an average annual growth rate of 9. 5 percent.
All of the water in the emirate's distribution system--the water used for human consumption--is produced by nine large desalination plants, to the tune of 634 million Imperial gallons a day in 2011.
By 2016, just three years from now, demand is expected to increase another 45 percent, to 999 million Imperial gallons a day.
Abu dhabi water demand forecast. Source: ADWEC Virtually all desalination activities are powered currently by natural gas-fired cogeneration plants burning an average of 1. 73 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of gas.
Therefore, about 0. 86 Bcf/d of gas went to water desalination in 2011, which likely rose to 1 Bcf/d in 2012 (data for 2012 is not yet available).
In short, it imports almost exactly the same amount of gas as Abu dhabi uses for water desalination.
Water they thinking? Desalination is the only way to produce more water in these arid countries.
To put the word arid in perspective, Abu dhabi receives an average of just 82 millimeters (mm) of rainfall per year--less than one-quarter the rainfall recorded in the state of Arizona.
Worse, the groundwater that provided around 80 percent of its water supply 10 years ago is drying up,
Abu dhabi consumes about 26 times as much water as it gets in rainfall. Many groundwater wells are expected to become useless in 30 years.
Caught between the rapidly rising cost of natural gas-powered desalination and exploding water demand, Abu dhabi is looking to its massive solar resource
and other renewables to provide the water of the future. We are ready to aggressively pursue desalination powered by renewable energy
But like Abu dhabi, it is looking to renewables as a means of securing its water supply.
and 100 percent of our water is desalinated. We still have a sharp growth trajectory. We have an enormous solar resource.
We look at solar to solve our water and food security issues...We have no water reserve to speak of--two to four days at most.
This is unacceptable. He forecast, hopefully, that most of Qatar's water would be produced with renewable energy in 10 years'time.
Saudi arabia will need to make similar moves, since it burns more than 1 million barrels a day of crude oil just to desalinate water.
Aside from being an enormous waste of an incredibly versatile and energy-dense resource, that's a major sacrifice of income.
but just as a point of reference), that's $115 million a day in lost revenue, just to make fresh water.
then reinforced how essential water is to oil production. And then they use it and then it's gone.
Because you need the water again for oil production. You need it. Fifteen to 20 percent of global oil use is there
Conservation is key With such enormous water demands and energy costs, it's clear that desalination alone--especially
Per capita water consumption of apartment dwellers in Abu dhabi is in line with U n. benchmark figures, at around 180 to 190 liters per day.
at roughly 330 liters per day for water consumed via the distribution system, and a massive 550 liters per day for all uses, including groundwater sources.
Water used to irrigate landscaping is already on the outs: Subsidies to irrigate forests are being eliminated,
Water-saving devices are required now in all new buildings (though you wouldn't know it from the massive shower head in my hotel!),
and parks and gardens are aiming to slash their water consumption in the coming years.
The water demands of food production are also undergoing close scrutiny, with specific crops being selected
Ultimately though, water consumption will require attitudinal changes and a rejiggering of the copious subsidies allotted to citizens.
Emiratee nationals receive water at zero cost, and treat it accordingly--washing down their cars on a daily basis
mishandling of my consumption of electricity, water, oil and gas? he asked rhetorically. Dubai also started to do a little bit of relief of the subsidy that has been in,
water and energy resources that were used in the production, processing and distribution of this food.
The annual water wastage from growing discarded crops totals about 550 billion cubic meters IME reports.
As water, land and energy resources come under increasing pressure from competing human demands, engineers have a crucial role to play in preventing food loss
and hydroponics, a method that relies solely on nutrient-rich water. There is a lot of debate about
local water. This could scare away a customer or two, given that this is Mexico city, where even the rain isn't clean
But the capital's newest watering hole takes its water very seriously and purports to offer the purest drink around.
however incomplete, to Mexico city's fraught relationship with water: In this often rainy metropolis of more than 20 million, there always seems to be either too much or too little.
which includes a period of harmonization in the final stage, Casa del Agua bottles rainwater.
We deliver the highest quality water in Mexico, Quinzanos said while relaxing in a wrought iron chair on the shop's roof garden,
The rainwater filters through a teak patio and garden of cherry, orange and lime trees and carpets of lavender, mint and thyme into storage tanks.
The water then passes through increasingly fine filtration systems and distillation machines. After that, the water is pure.
Bent on adding value the Casa del Agua runs the purified water through a process to restore minerals
and ionize it. Then comes harmonization, based on Japanese author Masaru Emoto's unproved hypothesis which holds that the environment including music
and prayer can affect water on a structural level. Quinzanos professes his faith in the harmonization process.
Before bottling, the purified water runs over stones engraved with the words love, respect and gratitude and is exposed, in bottles,
Using rainwater â it's unheard of. It's like designer water, taken another notch up.
The bottles, branding and design of the shop itself come from the team that created the typography and interior of Mexico's fast-expanding, homegrown coffee chain, Cielito Querido.
On the rooftop, Quinzanos took a swig from one of the swing-top water bottles. It has no taste
Other days, turning on the faucet yields only the gurgle and hiccup of pipes that have run dry as the city periodically shuts off water to one or another neighborhood.
the Casa del Agua taps water from the city system, but the goal is to rely on nature,
Speaking of lobster, how s your water quality? We happen to have some of the cleanest drinking water in the country.
The old system puts the sewage and storm water in the same pipes, and when it overflows it eventually ends up in the bay.
The process is going to have dramatic results in cleaning up the water in Casco Bay.
How Kansas city is making millions from human wasteafter cities have cleaned out waste in water treatment plants,
they're left with clean water and something called sewer sludge that's packed with human waste, toxins,
and other impurities you wouldn't want in your water. Kansas city treated it like other cities
Now that foil pouch has wonderful barrier properties to oxygen and water, which is what we want.
It holds onto nutrients, water, microorganisms. It improves crop yield. Because it's made from decomposing waste that would
Traditionally when you fertilize or water your crops you lose a lot of it. The fertilizer runs off or it doesn't get in the soil where it needs to be.
Hydrogen fuel made from a tiny forest of nanotreeselectrical engineers at the University of California-San diego have built a forest of nanowire trees that use solar energy to turn water into  hydrogen  fuel.
However, the conventional method of producing hydrogen gas relies on energy from fossil fuels to separate the atoms from other molecules like water.
and then transfers electrons through the zinc oxide branches to the surrounding water. That reaction produces hydrogen gas
Wang told Discovery News. The nanowire trees have managed to crush the cost-effectiveness of conventional technologies that separate hydrogen from water.
and chances are she wouldn't settle for a small company nor one simply looking for someone to water
while water and carbon dioxide are the only waste products from the process, the firm's PR manager Yi Dan said.
and salt water (the salt keeps the pathogenic microorganisms at bay as well as enabling the enzymes, some beneficial bacteria and various strains of yeast to flourish).
In the U s. Southwest, lawns are under attacklong-term drought coupled with a population explosion is squeezing the water supply in cities throughout the U s. Southwest.
Now, city officials are getting more aggressive with their water-saving tactics, reported the NYT.
and replace it with a water-sipping landscape. For example, Los angeles has paid $1. 4 million to homeowners
Others are stepping up penalties for folks who water their lawns during peak hours or outright banning lush carpets of grass in new developments.
Las vegas has put in place one of the most aggressive water-saving policies in the country.
After a drought wiped out the city's water resources, the Las vegas Valley Water District established one of the first lawn rebate plans.
Since then, the water district has paid out nearly $200 million to remove 165.6 million square feet of grass from residences and businesses, according to the NYT report.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, a cooperative that includes the LVVWD, provides rebates of up to $1. 50 per square foot of grass converted to xeriscape.
There are other commercial efforts underway to develop a water-sipping grass for those who don't want to give up their patch of lawn.
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