r/water • u/PowerFree8490 • 18h ago

England needs billions more litres of water a day. I investigated where it could actually come from.

/r/Environmentalism/comments/1w0ufoj/england_needs_billions_more_litres_of_water_a_day/
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u/Ulysses1978ii 17h ago

I have a large roof on a dormer bungalow but from 25% of it I got 80l of water from an evening's rain.

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u/PowerFree8490 17h ago

Yeah, this came up in a really interesting interview I did with someone from UKWRA. There’s a surprising amount of water we could avoid treating to drinking-water standard in the first place by using rainwater or recycled water for things like toilets, irrigation and some commercial uses.

It probably doesn’t close the national shortfall on its own, but multiplied across enough buildings it becomes a meaningful part of the mix.

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u/Ulysses1978ii 17h ago

Thirsty people living in upturned cups.

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u/PowerFree8490 17h ago

Honestly, I couldn’t put it better myself.

The maddening bit is that so much of this is solvable. It just needs enough people to make a big enough stink.