Visit at the Water Hub - Emory University

At the Emory University we had the opportunity to see and learn about a water recycling system, the WaterHub, which is the first system of its kind in the US. The special thing about it is that it cleans waste water right on the campus and thus is able to provide nearly 40% of Emory’s total campus water needs. Thus Emory’s draw of water from Atlanta’s municipal water supply will reduce by up to 146 million gallons of water annually.

This shows another example which demonstrates that economic benefit and sustainable behavior fit together perfectly and complements one another. From my perspective a remarkable point is also the fact that the whole cleaning is done mainly through natural processes, for example cleaning the water through the roots of various plants. This shows us again that we don’t necessarily need to develop completely new techniques but rather to reclaim natural original methods - basically let nature doing its job. Water is becoming rapidly more and more of an alarming issue or already is one, as you can see f. ex. in California.

In my opinion water is even more of an issue than switching to renewable energies because we currently still have several possibilities to produce energy but we do not have an alternative to water. So it’s even more important to find ways to recycle it, like The WaterHub is doing it already.

#LL