With less water, Chinese cities are forced to get creative. Brewery capital Qingdao is using seawater to flush its toilets. A pilot project is underway to use Pacific waters in the city’s commodes, saving potable water for a thirsty population. Across the country, one-third of household water consumption goes down the drain every time a toilet goes flush.
Qingdao wouldn’t be the first Asian city to look to the sea to clean its pipes. In Hong Kong, 80% of the city’s population relies on seawater to take care of their flushing needs.
Already, China has some 20 desalination plants operating around the country to help alleviate water shortages in 400 of the country’s more than major 600 cities, according to China Daily.
- Brewskie
More Kudos to Bloggin' Brewskie for the one of the best blogs anywhere.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I am thinking of writing a book, or major article. I have become convinced the world is set to go on another 20-year economic boom. If you look at the technical advances chronicled in Ghawar Guzzler, it is amazing.
More than that, there are now R&D, and academic, and industry research outfits not just in the U.S., but also Japan and China and Europe, and possibly even India. There is palm oil research in Thailand.
And now, thanks to the web, information is transmitted instantly, and globally.
In short, never before has so much education and talent been assembled and working. Positive results are transmitted globally and instantly.
I suspect we are on the cusp of commercial lithium batteries--yet this is just one small corner of the universe, one that we "energy junkies" look at. Similar progress is being made on all fronts.
I wish I could live for a few hundred years and see how this all plays out.
Except for man's regrettable inhumanity to man, the future looks fantastic.
B "Beano" Cole
I suspect we are just entering the age of permanent and rapid innovation--like the last 20 years, but even better.
Benjamin,
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thought with human living coupled w/technology, plus how it relates to the environment and to so-called sustainable living, is that for much of civilized history, what humans have conducted has hardly been sustainable - yet we’ve managed to persist through by leaping up the technology tree. The Bronze Age wasn’t sustainable, neither was pre-industrial age Britain’s deforestation, nor a slew of pre-industrial agricultural techniques; but again, we’ve managed to persist and, in the event of things, have ravaged the environment (of course if anyone cares about the environment enough, they should put themselves at mercy’s end of Mother Nature. Yes, yes: famines, floods, disease and pestilence - Mother Nature is a cruel vixen to worship; so technology, regardless of its regrettable damage, is still a comfortable buffer to embrace (well, except for the wars she benefits)). The lesson is that humans have always persisted because they could embrace additional technology, not less of it.
Moving on… it's good to hear you're giving thoughts to writing a book. Writing a book is time consuming, but it isn't necessarily hard if you're willing to devote the time to it. This is the land of literary opportunity: if Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Anderson - plus they have ghost writers - anyone can.