Your Water Comes from Where?!??

A recent op-ed story on the need for sanitation (read: functional latrines or toilets) in the aftermath of the Szechuan province earthquake reminded me of how much we don't want to talk about our own waste. And of a different story I had read that offers a glimpse of the future in a world with limited clean water supplies.

Last September, the Pioneer Press ran a story about an Afton, Minnesota, inventor who has created a self-contained, whole-house sewage treatment system. The story isn't on their website any more, but the article can be seen in a mangled PDF version here. A site called erosioncontrol.com also has the poop on the invention (as it were).

Clint Elston is the guy, and his company is called Equarius. He's patented a system that separates solid waste, as from a toilet or garbage disposal, from gray water -- water that is used but not really soiled when it drains from from showers, washing machines, and dishwashers. The solid wastes are composted in a closed system using worms, while the gray water is cleaned up through a process involving ozone, micro-organisms, and a bunch of other things I don't understand.

The cleaned up, recycled gray water is then reused for drinking, bathing, and so on. The fully composted solid waste can be put on your garden.


Despite all this, some water does gets wasted or evaporated each day in Elston's system, but it's only about 3 gallons per person -- compared to 75 gallons per day per person in a normal house. And the 3 gallons gets replaced by rain water, caught from the roof, stored in cisterns in the basement and purified like the gray water.

Gee, I love inventors.