Shit Rivers: The Grey Area

As an avid paddler of boards, I have been quite preoccupied with watery stuff for quite some time.  Whilst I live in the perpetual optimistic middle ground of eco-politics, I do think that the situation with english waterways and the water companies sewage release to be an absolute shit show - pun intended.  The fact that I use (and have done for a long time) the Surfers Against Sewage app, that informs of coastal pollution by proxy, alongside weather and tidal forecasts for planning my excursions is deeply depressing to me.

I am not directly annoyed with my MP over votes over the environment bill last week, I understand how the whip works.  I do however think it was a gross miscalculation on the part of the Government of the temperature of the Nation on the topic.  Thankfully, amendments yet to be seen, it seems that a correction is on the way.  A real show of the power of calm and peaceful protest .  Well done  #EndSewagePollution 

I have been measuring my family carbon footprint for about four years now as near as I can.  I have sought to make reductions to it and I have used the information to make household decisions.  I understand however that the concept of the carbon footprint was an invention of the fossil fuel industry to try and shift accountability of the carbon problem to the individual, but I also accept that I hold a share of the accountability.  I cannot wring my hands at the deforestation of the Amazon, but then insist on the ready availability of my beefburger.  Can I lament the fossil fuel industry but choose to use the car to go to the shop at the end of the road?

So hopefully we will have a system whereby water companies are held to account for the poo-poo they pump into rivers.  The levels of rainfall are relevant to the problem, but certainly no excuse to just say “soz, climate change” and do precisely naff all.  Hopefully that is about to change but, like the carbon footprint, I’m going to put some work into how I can change my own behaviour to do my part.    The grey area: the so-called grey waste water that comes from my home.  If I can reduce the amount of water going into the drains, I can reduce my contribution to the volume of water that is a contributory factor to either the problem or the excuse of dumping untreated sewage into our rivers.

Having checked it out first, I know that all of my gutters feed into a run-off that goes into the ground beneath my lawn.   Otherwise this is probably where I would have started.  Waterbutts holding water locally for gardening use is straight forward and seems like a fairly obvious initiative for councils to push.
But the most obvious way for me to look at whatever you would call this water footprint (displacement?) is to discuss the elephant in my living room: my showers.  I shower with an unacceptable frequency and duration and have for most of my life.  I’ve put a huge amount of self-analysis around why I have to endlessly stand under as-close-to-burning-as-possible water and feel powerless to change it.  The earliest formations of this habit seems to stem from when I lived at home and my Mother used to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom, window closed.  When I went into the bathroom I vividly remember staying low in the room, like someone in a burning building.  The only way to cut through the air was to fill the room with steam as quickly as possible and thus a habit was formed.  Pile on that twenty years of repitition and maybe that explains some of my problem.  Like the monkeys with the hose, take away the cigarette and I still steam the room up and scorch my skin because… that’s what I do.

Phase one of attacking this was actually very simple.  My daughter MiniFish began writing an “Earthshot journal” of things we could do to help the wide world, and it seems that was all it took.  My six year old girl writes, in beautiful handwriting I might add, “Daddy needs to take short showers” and click - I seem so far to be able to do it from that point.   I have reduced myself down to a single two minute shower each day.  I ask siri to set me a two minute timer just before I get in the shower and then, because siri is not great with sound distortion, it is so annoying getting the alarm to stop that it tends to force me out of the shower anyway.  I will admit though that often the alarm goes off and I realise I have just been standing there like a zombie and thought about 10 seconds had passed.

For phase two I am looking to manage a percentage of the grey waste water in such a way as to not introduce it into the drains.  Whilst, unmetered, it would be very difficult to measure what I am putting in, it should be straight forward to measure what I am not.

Task One : Find Viable Water

Back to the shower, the most obvious freebie is the water drawn before the shower gets to temperature.  I’ll side-step your comment that I should be cold-showering, of course. 
For other water sources the key thing is to ensure the water captured does not contain anything that is harmful to whatever you plan to do with it.  If it’s gardening water, it can’t contain anything that will kill plants or indeed soil microbiology.  To do this I will be researching each product I use which intersects this initiative.  I will also be trying to ensure that the ratio of it to fresh water stays reasonable.

Task Two: Capture Water

The current working solution is a bucket in the shower.  Pretty low-tech for now, but does the job.

Task Three: Storage and Distribution of Captured Water

Essentially I am winning here if I introduce the viable water to me local water system.  I can throw it by the bucket across the lawn, I can fill a watering can and traipse about watering.  Additionally I acquired a water butt (broken at side of road - easy repair with gorilla tape) which sits at the end of the garden in an annoyingly sheltered spot that doesn't get rainfall.   That makes it ideal for topups.  Rigging up an old hose-pipe and nozzle adapter, this allows me to slowly distribute the water where I want.  When the tank gets full, I can leave the tap open to just use the system as a run-off.  Doesn’t even need to be watertight/efficient as water going anywhere other than the drain is victory.

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