Water Infrastructure Update

A Quest for Even Safer Drinking Water published today in the NY Times emphasizes the problems with the national water infrastructure. The proposals I laid out for Autonomous Infrastructure just 2 days ago would address this head on. How’s that for timely? J

 “Still, millions of individual cases of waterborne diseases occur annually and related hospitalization costs approach $1 billion each year. … 164 waterborne disease outbreaks, almost entirely from protozoan cysts of the parasite Cryptosporidium.”

“Water drawn from the faucet is markedly different from the water that leaves the system’s treatment facility. ‘The ecology,’ Dr. Pace said, ‘is the distribution system. … My fear is that we’re increasing the likelihood of engineered environments contributing to antibiotic resistance’”

My proposal for Pipe-Free Water Distribution fits this need perfectly, and would readily enable the proposal for UV processing:

“begin zapping tap water with ultraviolet light to inactivate organisms like Cryptosporidium that resist chlorine-based treatments. The water supply system remains a deteriorating, mostly subterranean infrastructure so complex that in many municipalities officials can’t even say where all the pipes are laid.”

“And many scientists fear that the use of chlorine can result in the growth of resistant and sometimes harmful microorganisms, including Legionella, the cause of Legionnaires’ disease and Pontiac fever, and the nontuberculous mycobacteria, which can infect the lungs, skin and other organs.

“Mycobacteria are common inhabitants in drinking water systems, and researchers are particularly interested in the estimated 20,000 infections they cause annually.”

When we talk more about Sustainable Communities I’ll lay out proposals for other aspects, including research, monitoring, and other water related issues.

Autonomous Actors – Autonomous Recycling

Last year Family Champions, a local volunteer group, ran a sophisticated recycling effort. The payoff was that if they could accumulate a cargo container full of a particular type of recyclable, then a volume recycler would pay for it, otherwise it was just trash. So we separated plastics by the 7 different recycling numbers, plastic bags, paper milk containers with the plastic nozzles removed, newspaper, office paper, glass by color, etc.

The operation worked in a vacant warehouse with dozens of large containers and required a large staff of volunteers. Ultimately it was just too much effort, partly because most people weren’t willing to do the detailed separation: we had 14 different containers in the basement, and even with the detailed instructions we still weren’t sure what to do with some items.

Our volume of trash/garbage decreased by over 2/3, so you see how much of our trash is relatively easily recyclable. Our new home will have a garbage disposal, and we are estimating how much this will reduce our volume of garbage, and also cut smells. Our daughter maintains a compost pile and that consumes most of her garbage.

So we are looking at a major change, possibly reducing our trash/garbage to almost zero!

There are many different forms of recycling:

• Compost piles
• Trash collection
• Special collection days
• Separating recyclables into different containers
• Dealing with special and hazardous materials: batteries, paints, electronics, etc.
• Large item pickup or drop off
• Donations to charities
• Selling items on the Internet or through the local newspaper
• Running a yard sale
• Church and community sales, etc.

In some cases you can just put things out with your garbage and trash, perhaps in special containers; in other cases you need to drive somewhere, or you need to make special arrangements. All of these take some degree of thought and effort on your part.

There are several challenges to achieving effective recycling:

1. Convincing each person to commit to recycling
2. Knowing what is recyclable and what isn’t
3. Knowing what to do with each type of recyclable item
4. Having a place to put items waiting for recycling
5. Knowing when you can take the recycling
6. Making time to take the recycling
7. Taking your collection to the recycling location(s), be it your curb or driving there
8. Cleaning up any mess made by the recycling process.

This requires time, thought, space, and other resources. Many people aren't willing or able to put forth this effort.

What if you could just take each item as it comes to hand and put it in a waiting container, and it would be whisked away for the proper treatment? That’s the promise of Autonomous Recycling!

We are using Autonomous Vehicles to take each item as you are finished with it and take it to the appropriate place.

You may be preparing a meal and finish a milk carton, or peel a peach, or finish a bottle with a deposit, or finish reading your newspaper. You just want to drop the item and be done with it.

Why can’t a suitable container be waiting, for example, in place of your trashcan? When you drop something in, an Autonomous Vehicle comes and takes it away, replacing the container for your next recyclable item.

The item is then autonomously identified and taken to the appropriate place. The disposition can include standing instructions from you, for example, whether to take bottles with deposits to the Boy Scouts, or a redemption center. Or you may give some explicit instructions for a particular item, for example take it to your upcoming community yard sale.

You might think this is to difficult or expensive to automate, but the post office already does automatic address decoding, and decoding recycling labels is easy by comparison. Real-time chemical analysis on a chip is here now, we could even distinguish the type of garbage automatically. And these technologies are still in the early stages of development, so inexpensive analysis is going to be routine. This isn’t a technological challenge in the future!

If the item needs some preparation, such as rinsing out a soda bottle or a milk carton, the container is taken to the appropriate location for autonomous washing or other treatment. For example to determine whether it is suitable for reuse or needs to be scrapped: does the TV still work, it is good enough to be sold, donated, or does it need to be recycled.

My daughter used to work in an electronics recycling center, screening items and then doing partial disassembly. The treatment depends on the current value of the various components, for example, copper is quite valuable, but CRTs are just hazardous waste, but some day the phosphorus or glass may be valuable enough to recover.

Our first family TV was rescued from a neighbor’s trash; I picked it up for the parts, but turned I it on and behold it worked, so we used it for a year until my wife and I built a Heathkit GR-269 TV – a fun joint project.

Using Autonomous Vehicles to collect and distribute, and using Autonomous Actors to separate and process all recyclables, a Sustainable Community might turn a profit from the recyclables, and in the process reduce or even eliminate its waste stream completely, and generate some energy.

And it will take even less of your and my time and effort – everyone wins.