Toilet-to-tap
Are you ready?
Bangalore is India’s Silicon Valley. It was once full of pristine lakes and lush gardens. Now it’s a parched city of concrete.
Expansion plans took no account of the need for water.
But reports suggest that the public isn’t yet ready to use treated water enthusiastically. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board is offering to supply treated wastewater in tankers. The cost is currently just £4.26 per tanker, a subsidised rate as part of a campaign to discourage the use of freshwater for non-potable purposes.
Half the problem surely is in the name. Recycled. Reused. It doesn’t appeal. And one can’t help remembering that feeding cattle with meat-and-bone meal that contained the remains of other cattle, some of which had bovine spongiform encephalopathy, led to new variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease in humans.
On the flip side, we’re happy to pay ludicrous amounts to bottle and transport water that comes from springs, wells, icebergs, glaciers, volcanoes and even the deep sea when the tap water is perfectly safe and plentiful. If you want to find an exhaustive list of options in your part of the world, check this out.
Recycled water needs another name. i2O is already taken.