clean water from common cactus

Treehugger brought an article about how the common prickly pear cactus could give us clean, safe, and cheap drinking water. The story was originally reported in the New Scientist. The process itself if quite simple: you just boil a bit of cactus and then drop it in the contaminated water. There’s more testing to do, but we think this is pretty cool.

photo: ah zut

america’s unquenchable thirst

Minnesota Public Radio program Midday recent guest Robert Glennon believes America’s thirst for water is “Unquenchable.” While we all think of Texas, California and Arizona, but even Minnesota other mid-west states have been facing water shortages. In fact, some cities in Minnesota weren’t able to supply enough water for ethanol refineries and Lake Superior is too low to float fully-loaded cargo ships. We’ve been using so much water that our groundwater pumping is getting out of hand. America is depleting its groundwater at a faster rate than it can be naturally replenished. Just last year, Atlanta was within 90 days of running completely dry. And that’s not all due to drought, but population expansion stressing water resources.

One of the biggest water wasters, according to Glennon, is our sanitation system. Each year America flushes 6 billions gallons of water down the toilet. This water is then sent back to the treatment plant to be used again. The problem is that downstream, say in New Orleans, their drinking water has been run through this cycle many times.

Glennon was also on The Daily Show last year where Jon Stewart points out that our energy policy, even moving to some clean energy technologies, could worsen the crisis.

protests prevent vote on water bill

Columbia University’s Earth Institute just posted an article about the growing water crisis in Ecuador. At the center of the problem is who owns the rights to the country’s water. In 2008, the constitution sited water as a fundamental human right. Since then many people feel this means that water should be a public utility and not privatized. As you can guess, that’s exactly what’s been happening. Over the years the people have been staging protests which have turned violent. Despite the outrage, the legislature has wanted to begin debate on a new “Water Act” that will give even more control to private companies with few guarantees for the population for continued access to clean, affordable water. Protests by Ecuador’s major indigenous organizations, however, seem to have resulted in the session coming to an end without a vote on the bill.

burmese drought

Once again the people of Burma are suffering. This time, record high temperatures and a late monsoon season have dried up wells and other drinking water sources. Some 60 villages are reported to be under severe water shortages. The drought is taking its toll in other ways as well. The severe heat and low water levels have caused some 100,000 fish deaths at fish farms in Rangoon. One article reported that while some local water bottling companies have donated some water, the government hasn’t responded to the crisis. In a related story, the Mekong River is at a 50-year low. Downstream countries are blaming China for building too many dams, but China blames mother nature.

What water stories are you following? Share them in our comments section below.

Treehugger tips us off to showbiz’s eco-scorecard. Find out who aced the green test and who earned Fs.

Admittedly a little self-promotional, nevertheless we were super excited to see AirDye® coverage on the New York Times’ green business blog.

Michael Pritchard demonstrates his newest invention—the Lifesaver water bottle—on TEDGlobal conference attendee Chris Anderson.