Water - Urban Dweller - Reduce personal impact - Traditional
Submitted by Sanchayan on December 8, 2009 - 12:00
Hi, I work for Arghyam (http://arghyam.org). I am currently working a personal project which aspires to map various ways by which an urban dweller can reduce his impact on the environment.
- One such source of information could be traditional sources of knowledge.
- In the case of water, the various possible ways could be finding more eco-friendly alternatives to using toothpastes, shampoos, soaps, washing powders etc
Are there ways by which an urban dweller, for instance, could reduce the "contamination" at the point the waste water leaves his house -at the sink,for instance. At the same time, its important that these alternatives are easily available to the urban dweller, and the dweller should also be able to "integrate" such practises easily into his day-to-day lifestyle with relative ease.
I shall be grateful, if you could share your experiences and knowledge with me or direct me to similar sources of information.
Thanks and Regards,
Sanchayan
3. Eco-friendly alternatives to water-guzzling cleansing products
Hi Sanchayan,
I've been using powdered soapnuts as a sustainable alternative to detergents for the past year now.
An outlet was provided from my washing machine directly into the garden, and the wash water from each load (100+ litres) was used directly to recharge the water table and water our garden.
After experimenting with soapnut detergents for nearly 4 months, I've switched to soapnut based products for all our household cleaning needs.
I now use a soapnut based cleanser for mopping the house, and also use a soap nut based vessel scourer (to which I've added tamarind, and Arappu thool - Albizia amara).
Again the mop water can be used in the garden.
Do contact me @ preethi@krya.in / +919962544598 in case you have further doubts.
2. urban water waste
Urban India is growing fast and is growing at an alarming rate. The construction of various colonies in India is more interested on how glossy they look than how they could answer these fundamental questions of controlling point source discharges into waste water.
I personally believe that planting small devices that can reduce point source discharge into waste water would be a costly affair. In fact if we can improve the sanitation of the area as a whole and build drainage and waste water plants that can take care of these issues. Waste water plants are capable in handling various dissolved impurities in waste water before they can be discharged from the waste water plants.
What we can do is segregate the waste that we generate and put it into various bags. We can also make sure that we don't throw harmful acids and bases into the waste water disposal drains. Moreover the kind of soaps and washing powders that we use for our normal daily activities are variant in nature. Some times the best way to keep the Ph of the waste water under control would be modifying the source and study the effects of these washing powders on water Ph. This way we would make sure that the source will not cause appreciable changes in Ph of the waster water. Most of the times the wastes generated from markets and other commercial areas near urban areas have a varied content of impurities added to the waste discharge. We can build mini waste water plants just outside the complex for the whole colony or the market place and then send this discharge into the main waste water plant.
This way the onus of controlling the waste is shared by the mini waste water plant and the cost of building the waste water plant can be shared by community.
Harish Sangireddy Graduate Research Assistant Center for Research in Water Resources The University of Texas at Austin Austin TX, USA 78722
1. about urban water waste !
Sir,
we belong to a semi urban or rural area where this factor is not much more important whether and how waste water leaves the house but
as we face in urban area where good sanitation is a big problem.
This type of problem only arises in urban area.This problem is tracked only by constructing common toilets and taps.
Secondly eco-friendly toilets including underground water soakpit/ water discharge system should be installed in required
urban ares.