An innovative method to cut down water use for combating water scarcity by Börje Brandt

“When the Europeans first came here, Columbus, we could drink out of any river.
If the Europeans had lived the Indian way when they came, we’d still be drinking out of the waters, because, the water is sacred, the air is sacred.”

Wisdom from Native American Indians

With this wisdom in mind, my new concept to clean and recycle water for such activities as taking a shower, washing hands and do the dishes properly WITHOUT using our precious potable water source for that will be one part solution to decrease the water usage around our world. Potable drinking water is for drinking purpose and also for cooking food, making coffee or tea and so on.

My name is Börje Brandt, and I’m situated in the Northern part of Sweden where we have a lot of water. With that as a background of my living-environment, I have developed a concept to decrease the water usage with up to 3.500 % calculated on the average Swedish usage of 175-200 liters of water per day and per person. The use of water (loss of water) can be as low as 2.5 – 3.5 liters of water per person and day.

This concept will clean, recycle and reuse water for showering, washing hands and do the dishes. These activities of normal behaviors keep human beings in good health and shape. BUT, in regions, countries and continents that have been stricken with severe water scarcity these normal activities cannot be managed.

For people living in developing countries, who need to conduct walkabouts every day and often several times per day to collect water, this system or concept will enable the people and families so they have to refill their water supplies just once a week.

In that way, the woman of the household (who often is the one collecting water) can participate in other economic activities and the children can participate in educational activities. People living in informal settlements (slums and shantytowns) often have to pay 5-10 times more for every liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.

This system will improve sanitation, improve health and provide a better life for people living in regions with water shortages and severe water scarcity.

The concept can also be connected to an irrigating system with greenhouse tents so the water can be recycled and reused to irrigate crops.

To finance the water cleaning & recycling system for developing countries the idea is to use micro-credit loans and also to investigate the “Green Fund” that is set to open 2015.

Why clean and reuse water for shower, hand-sink and kitchen-sink use?

The climate change consequences will among others raise the average temperature and as for an example the toxic blue-green algae will grow. The rising temperatures will also favor bacteria and parasites that can make water transportation systems toxic, and in the end also poison the humans. More rainy weather with increased water flows that can create problems for storm drain water systems, and flooding will damage potable and clean water transportation piping systems into the common households. Flooding also makes a toxic tribute to nature due the spread of toxic waste from industries, and that also in the end leaks down to the ground-water systems and gets back to us while using old pumping systems or need to drill for new water wells.

Conclusion: We need to better protect and minimize the use of clean potable water. For areas that we don’t need to use potable water we need to use recycled water instead, so in that way we can use much smaller amounts of fresh and potable water and utilize it just for drinking purpose.

With this water cleaning & recycling system there would be:

• Decreased stress on the groundwater resources.
• Decreased stress due conflicts between countries and also domestic conflicts of water ownerships between farmers, industry and the public usage.
• Decreased stress on the environment due less transportations with water trucks.
• Deceased stress on the very often very bad sanitation piping systems.
• No need have buried sanitation pipelines if you will use topsoil toilette solutions.
• Decreased stress on the environment due we will promote the use of natural/organic and bio-degradable products for hygiene, cleaning and detergents usage.
• Will handle bacteria and parasites due a solar heating solution, and also a 100 % bio-degradable solution that kills bacteria and parasites.
• Can be a two way solution that will clean up and recycle water for irrigating purpose, with the use of greenhouse tents.
• A better awareness from the public, to understand that a better water efficient solution to clean and recycle water will be for the best of all people.

In this concept (to construct a prototype) I have a Professor in land and water resources engineering from KTH (School of Architecture and the Built Environment) in Stockholm and a Professor and a associate professor from the University of Uppsala in air, water and landscape sciences. An associate professor from the University of Linkoping has also committed collaboration with this concept. Contacts with leading academia and suppliers of membranes, filters etc. and a network of entrepreneurs within natural water cleaning technologies all within Sweden have been established. In my work with the concept I have also a R&D Institute in Sweden that is working with sensors for maintain water quality control.

In developing countries with severe water scarcity the households will be enabled to have one more adult in productive economic activity and in that way supplement the household income.

Calculated on a monthly cost of 3 – 3.5 GBP (due for example micro-credit loans) and that an adult earns on an average basis around 0.6 – 0.9 GBP per day giving the household an opportunity to bring in 12.5 – 18.5 GBP extra per month. A deduction for the monthly costs gives the household an extra income of around 9 – 15 GBP per month.

An outsourced production line in India are calculated to produce a water cleaning and recycling system unit to a cost of 467 – 565 GBP exclusive VAT, and with micro-credit loans (15 years/1%) the goal is to have a monthly cost around 3 – 3.5 GBP.

My idea is also to collaborate with female entrepreneur organizations in India that are part of the domestic retail organization, due to it is the woman who has the knowledge regarding the time and efforts it takes to collect water for the households every day and often several times per day.

The pay-off time for users in for example India is calculated to 7 – 15 years, depending on potential support from the Green Fund domestic contributions and supports, and how much the household are willing to pay per month.

More and more people are buying water as they don’t trust the drinking water pipeline is delivering with good quality directly consumable water. For example; the price of bottled water (~0.5 liter) is between 0.6 – 2.5 GBP worldwide.

There are also contaminated areas in India where people cannot use ground-water due toxic pollutions such as heavy metals, dissolving agents, pesticides, plant protecting agents, natural gas, soaking leaching of plastics, oil among others.

With fewer diseases there will be fewer costs for people living in areas with polluted groundwater. With this system in place people in these affected areas will be enabled to purchase less amount of water for various uses such as hygiene, cleaning and doing the dishes.

My quest & search is; if domestic organizations, companies and the public living in India would be interested in supporting my efforts to construct a first prototype for the benefits for common households in India that are suffering from severe water scarcity today and in the near future?

For any comments/questions or for exploring strategic partnerships, please contact me directly.

With the very best regards from Sweden,

Börje Brandt
Regulus teknikutveckling
Storgatan 6J
SE-93431 Kåge
Sweden
Phone: +46 910 53485 or +46 70 3607580
Mail: boerje.brandt@allmail.se
Skype: boerje.brandt