💩Defending a Controversial Topic Competition - Getting Over the Yuck Factor! 💩
Let’s pretend you have a choice for a moment
This is my entry into @beggars Defend a Controversial Topic competition. This is an excellent competition idea so I strongly recommend you take part in this. It's a very unique idea and one that I personally love.
If you've been reading my past posts, you'll know that I have a little bit of a passion for our environment. So it's only natural that my entry into this competition has an environmental theme. But don't let that you put you off, let the fact that I'm going to be telling you to drink your own urine put you off instead (I'm joking - watch the video and/ or continue reading, it's interesting stuff, I promise).
Why would I tell you to drink your own urine? Well, there's not a lot of water out there for us to drink. And I've spoken about this already in a previous post. I've copied some of this text below:
It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that most of the water on earth is quite salty. The graphic below displays the distribution of water on earth very effectively.
Essentially, 97% of the worlds water is in our oceans. So 3% of the worlds water is fresh. Of this fresh water, almost 69% is tied up in icecaps and glaciers with just over 30% locked up as groundwater. This leaves just under 1% of our available freshwater on the surface of our planet.
This means that groundwater is quite important, it's where most of our freshwater is stored. And we already tap into this water source very intensely. For example, all that bottled water we drink? The vast majority of that is sourced from our groundwater systems. All of that water used to make Coke's products? That is all sourced from our groundwater systems.
And the food we eat? Most of it is irrigated using groundwater. The USA alone used 65% of their fresh groundwater supplies for crop irrigation in 2010.
We rely very heavily on our fresh groundwater supply.
And it's not just our groundwater supply that we rely heavily on. Our freshwater supply on the surface is also heavily utilised given its ease of access. And because our freshwater supply is so small, we're reusing it all the time. And through its reuse, this water is very easily polluted to levels where it is very dangerous to our environment and our health.
And then there are the many other activities that affect the quality of our water - agriculture, mining, power generation, emissions from machinery and vehicles etc. All of these things have a significant impact on our water quality. So we already need to treat our water before drinking it.
In Australia, the average water use per person is 340 litres per day. This is an insane figure when you look at what people use in other, less developed countries(20 litres per day is common in some developing nations). And 340 litres per day water consumption is insane when you take into account that Australia is the driest populated continent on the planet.
If we want to continue our affluent use of water, we need to consider how we manage this water once it's being used. Realistically, the best outcome for the water we've used, is for it to be treated back to a level of quality where we can use it again for the same purposes. This would mean that all the water you flush down the toilet would end up at a treatment facility, go through an intensive treatment process, and is then sent back to a storage facility prior to being sent back to your home to arrive in your taps again.
The problem with this though, is that many people find the idea of drinking water that has spent time in their toilet bowls kind of gross. This is the "yuck factor" and is the main reason preventing the drinking of treated effluent (sewage, or toilet water) being an accepted thing in many developed countries.
The reality is however, that the treatment processes that we have available to us can already bring this water back to a quality that is beyond acceptable for us to drink. And, at the end of the day, we have no choice but to accept this technology and start drinking out treated effluent. There simply isn't enough water available to support our growing population.
And the most entertaining part of this topic, however, is that you're probably already drinking your own urine. Whether you like it or not. In Australia, three of our states are already sending treated effluent to our residential water supplies. So if those states can do it, there's no reason why every other state or territory can't.
And we're not alone. There are plenty of other countries and states (including the USA) where drinking recycled water is common and well established.
So while this post is meant to convince you that it's OK to drink recycled effluent, the reality is, it's quite simply something that you need to accept as normal. We have no choice in the matter. Recycling effluent water is being done and needs to be implemented across the globe. Otherwise there simply won't be enough fresh water to support our ever expanding population. And the availability of fresh water, along with the availability of good quality and fresh food will be the limiting factors preventing our global population from growing further.
Have I convinced you that it's OK to drink your urine? Have I grossed you out completely? Not that it matters, you're probably drinking it already anyway!
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This is solid @mazzle I never expected you would pick a topic like this, haha. But I must say, as a huge Bear Grylls I am not completely averse to drinking my own urine if it ever came down to it (by choice). If it was survival or death, I'd choose urine every time.
May not be the best bet to survive by drinking urine...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2016-09-13/is-urine-sterile/7835934
Thanks @beggars. It was a topic that got stuck in my head after seeing your competition.
Bear Grylls probably didn’t research the dangers of untreated urine. He probably should. :P
There's a broken sewerage pipe that keeps leaking shits up onto the footpath near me. I wouldn't drink that water.
Get out there and suck on that broken pipe. Think about all of those vitamins.
By vitamins do you mean bacteria?
B group something or other. 😄
Believe it or not , there is such a thing called "Urine Therapy" , check the section of public figures who drank their own urine ( untreated)!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy
There’s also plenty of evidence that it’s not the best idea to drink your untreated urine. :P
You don't say... :)
Just to be clear. You're not saying drink my own urine. You're saying, drink you're already retreated, separated, filtered, refreshed, detoxified water so it's safe to consume. :)
The only problem I have with this premise is that the likelihood of any of us who might be already drinking recycled water of actually drinking our own urine is pretty low, don't you think? :)
So, I guess if I'm already doing it, and I don't regularly think about it, I'm in good shape.
As it is, I think we must have your share of groundwater here in the Pacific Northwest. Just need to figure out how to get it to you. :)
You’re spot on. I mean treated effluent. There was a study performed in London that showed a person was likely to drink their urine a few times over every year. It was quite funny. I doubt that applies to every city though.
A study. Okkkkaaaaaaayyyyyy. I guess I shouldn't be cringing about such things, but the idea of someone feeling the need to research just how much of their own treated effluent a citizen might drink over the course of a year bothers me more than the actual drinking does. That's wrong. :)
I thought it was incredibly interesting. But that’s just the scientist in me getting excited about water and waste cycles.
And someone's got to do it, don't get me wrong. That kind of study, not so much, but how to improve public health and waste treatment. I don't know that we pay enough attention in our daily lives to things like where everything goes when we flush or what happens when it gets there. Most of us are as far away from that as we can get.
And yet, if if weren't for someone taking interest in improving lives, we'd not have indoor plumbing, we'd be going in the woods somewhere and still dying of perfectly preventable diseases brought on by a poor lack of hygiene.
That’s very true. Some people don’t even know how their meat and veg are produced. They just think it appears in their shop and is ready for them to eat. It’s kind of scary that people don’t understand what it takes to produce 1 kilo of beef.
Edit: Victoria's off the hook, but WA is on the podium.
2 out of 3 ain’t bad. :)
I just have 5 Weissbier. This post makes me SO happy! Cheers everyone!!
Jim Stines did this to try and beat cancer, I'd be like fuck it... take me.
I ain't drinking piss
Exactly. If your body is getting rid of it as a waste product there are hardly going to be any good things in it. Apart from water of course.
This topic kinda pisses me off... No wait! Get a cup!
In all seriousness, access to clean water is, indeed, an important topic. While the USA has made great strides towards preserving and allocating fresh and recycled water, given the amount that we consume, we need to do a lot more.
Great topic, and good luck in your contest! I hope urine luck at the end!
Thanks Jeff. :)
I see an amazing amount of water wastage here in Australia. And yet our government drag their feet every year instead of making the difficult decisions required to ensure we have a sustainable supply for the long term.
It makes me incredibly angry to know what needs to happen but seeing people deliberately avoid making the smart choices.
I 100% agree mate.
I was heavily involved in the production of the recycled water schemes in Brisbane, I installed a whole bunch of the pumps.
If you saw how clean recycled water is, or maybe more importantly, how dirty "normal" water is, you'd jump for the recycled water every time.
When you have dead cows and people pissing in the dams, it baffles me to think that is better water than recycled water.
The other thing is, that all the recycled water was to be pumped into the dams, and would then be mixed with the "normal" water before going up to the regional treatment plants to be piped to your houses.
The vast majority of the stigma was from the media questions "would you drink poo water?". How was that ever going to win support of the public.
Great topic mate.
Thanks @gohba.handcrafts. I always find it funny that we have to "dilute" the recycled water with our normal water supplies before sending it to homes. Especially given that it is more often than not cleaner than what we normally drink.
I actually remember those articles in the paper and on shows like "A Current Affair" where they asked people if they'd drink sewage water... that pissed me off so much.
exactly.
I spent many a work day rebuilding big effluent pumps on the Gold Coast, these were the last stage of processing pushing the water into the rivers. That water was Crystal clear, and hadn't been through any of the RO and UV processing of the modern recycled water plants.
The place was so heavily chlorinated that the concrete buildings were on the verge of being condemned as the chlorine had eaten away most of the roofs and was rotting out the re-bars in the structure.
People need to get out into the real world to see what is actually going on around them.
Oh wow... I used to inspect treatment plants on mine sites and those things were amazing. Only little treatment units compared to what you were involved in but the water that came out of them was incredibly pure.
RO is fantastic technology and UV just makes sense given that it was once sewage. With those processes in place you don't need a lot of chemical treatment.