Opinion: Blue is the new green

From living roofs to living walls, from greywater to rainwater harvesting, water conservation is getting a technology makeover. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Allison Arieff explains why and how people should pay attention to water use, profiling techniques that go far beyond the “turn-off-the-tap-while-brushing” mantra:

Because water is cheap (at least for now) and seemingly in infinite supply, efforts to improve its use — or deter its overuse — have been inadequate. And it’s not just water itself that’s being wasted: there’s the energy required to transport and deliver it (particularly in such cases as Atlanta’s bizarre arrangement to get its water from Alabama and Florida, or any of us buying bottled water from Fiji). But there are innovations, large and small, now available that would provide for systematic management and optimization of our nation’s water. As individuals we receive messaging about water that is dramatically similar to the messaging we receive about energy consumption — and constitutes an equivalent drop in the bucket towards solving the problem. Public service announcements urge us to, alternately, swap out conventional light bulbs for compact fluorescents, or turn off the water while brushing our teeth. Both are important small steps; neither can begin to mitigate the larger challenges of resource depletion.

Read more here.

Source: The New York Times