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By Jon Wikstrom
California’s recent struggles with drought have been widely covered in the media of late. Everyone knows the situation there is dire.
But will this same dangerous crisis be repeated in other parts of the world?
NASA seems to think so. In a recent report, the agency pointed out that our world is running on the brink of a freshwater shortage. Giant lakes are disappearing, and the world is heading toward a future where many countries could be water insecure.
But when faced with a crisis, history shows us that humanity has an amazing ability to conquer it resourcefully, and that’s exactly what many environmental innovators are seeking to do by introducing new technology that helps businesses and individuals alike cut down on their water usage without compromising their quality of life.
Her invention will help to address the fact that 1.1 billion people worldwide don’t have consistent access to clean drinking water. Using Kurup’s invention and others like it, people will be able to make contaminated water drinkable so that they don’t have to depend on outside sources.
The company believes that almost a third of water is wasted even before it reaches a home. The software, Zonescan Alpha is helping utilities around the world crack down on this inefficiency and massive waste of precious resources.
CO2 cleaning involves the use of carbon dioxide in solid form, highly propelled dry ice particles out of a nozzle to clean a variety of different surfaces. The technology can be used for composite aircraft and automotive structures, cleaning complex medical equipment, and dry cleaning operations in an eco-friendly way. The CO2 required for these machines is recycled from other industrial uses, so not only does it contribute to solving the water shortage crisis, but also helps with climate change. This is a great example of an environmental solution that kills two birds with one stone.
Everyone from hikers to the British army has used it since. In that time it has not only given hundreds of thousands of people clean drinking water, but it’s done so without the financial or environmental costs of delivering water to the places that need them most.
Another innovation in shower technology is from Peter Cullin in Adelaide, Australia. He came up with a device that could save hundreds of millions of liters of water every year, even if it were installed in only 1,000 homes. He calls his device the Cullector Ultra Efficient Shower, which uses a reservoir tank to collect the water normally wasted during heating up the shower, then re-filters it back at the right temperature. These ideas and more show promise in limiting water usage to better our current environment.
Dry Bathing can help save 4 liters of water per person which can add up to many millions every single year and help billions of people who don’t have access to water stay clean and avoid the life-threatening bacteria that’s often found in the stagnant water some of these people use to bathe.
Many experts estimate that we use over 9 trillion cubic meters of water every year as a species. The demand for water will only grow as the global population continues to expand at an increasing pace.
Water is an already-previous resource that becomes even more precious with every passing day.
The recent water crisis in California has put the spotlight on water usage but the fact is that billions of people around the world live in regions where they are forced to walk for miles to get their daily supply for drinking, bathing and living and some aren’t even that lucky.
In the coming years, it will take creative solutions like these to help our world continue to thrive in the face of this global challenge.
Image credit: Flickr/gedenfield
Jon Wikstrom is the founder & CEO of Cool Clean technologies, one of the leaders in the eco-friendly technology of liquid CO2 cleaning. He also enjoys sharing his knowledge and passion for green technology as a guest blogger on a variety of manufacturing & environmental blogs. To learn more, check out http://www.coolClean.com.
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