From Toilet to Tap

  • Christiane Oelrich
  • India
  • Apr 11, 2014

Millions of people do not have access to enough potable Water, with the problem particularly acute in large urban centres like the city-state of Singapore - which also has no lakes. Singapore believes the solution lies in recycling sewage. Not surprisingly, the technology’s proponents first have to overcome major public concerns about that Water being a palatable, cost-effective alternative to measures such as desalination. A young girl wrinkles her nose in disgust before taking a sip from a colourful bottle filled with NEWater, Singapore’s brand of Recycled Water. She sighs with relief after a swallow: “It doesn’t taste of anything.” The Water company invites tests at its Visitor Centre. Singapore is running a public-awareness campaign on Water and Water-related issues - not least the long-term sustainable management of Water resources. It won the ‘Water for Life’ United Nations Water (UN-Water) Best Practices Award this year for its public communications and education efforts “Use every drop of Water more than once,” is the motto of the National Water Agency, which is a world leader in the Recycled Water technology.

 

Situated almost on the Equator, Singapore is blessed with large amounts of rainfall, but lacks space for Water reservoirs. Therefore, the option of Water recycling is taken more seriously than elsewhere. Public acceptance of the controversial concept, however, is another matter entirely. “Rain is also nothing more than Recycled Water,” says the tour guide at the NEWater Visitor Centre helpfully. Most of the Recycled Water is not re-introduced into Singapore’s Drinking Water supplies, but is instead used by the semi-conductor industry and the air-conditioning systems installed in public buildings. A small percentage is pumped into the Drinking Water reservoirs. Bottled NEWater can only be obtained at the NEWater Visitor Centre. Singapore began working on recycling of Water in 2003 and now a third of the Waste Water produced by its 5.7 million inhabitants is treated in this way. A 48-kilometre network of tunnels has been constructed to transport the sewage from residential areas to huge treatment facilities, where 273,000 cubic metres of NEWater is produced each day. The Water is purified by passing it through micro-filters and membranes. It is also irradiated with ultraviolet light. “If you imagine the Water molecules that pass through the membranes being as large as tennis balls, then an estrogen hormone would be the size of a football by comparison,” explains the guide at the NEWater Centre. “A virus would be the size of a truck and bacteria woul be as big as a house. None of these can make their way through the fine membrane.”

Water is a scarce commodity across much of the globe, with 4 billion people having to survive without adequate access to clean Drinking Water. The problem has been exacerbated by the migration of populations from rural hinterlands to ever-larger metropolitan centres. A Sea-water Desalination Plant needs three times as much energy to produce a litre of Drinking Water (as the NEWater production method). This has led Orange County in California to follow Singapore’s footsteps. Australians are also being encouraged to embrace the NEWater concept, but deep public scepticism and fears of health risks have so far kept it off the political agenda. However, Dr Tim Fletcher, Director of the Institute of Sustainable Water Resources at Monash University, believes it is only a matter of time before parts of Australia begin recycling Waste Water for use in the domestic supply. “The interesting thing is that the Australian standard for Recycled Water is stricter than the Australian standard for Drinking Water supply,” Fletcher told Australia’s ABC news channel. “In other words, if we’re going to drink Recycled Water, we can be assured that the quality actually will be of equal or higher quality than what we get in our Drinking Water supply - because the law requires it to be so.” However, Professor Peter Collignon, an Infectious Diseases’ physician and microbiologist at the Australian National University, believes that the concept is “irresponsible,” due to the risk of the spread of disease. “It should be a last-resort option for many reasons, but especially because of the potential catastrophic public health implications if something in this complex and the very-high-risk process goes wrong,” he says.

 

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