ABC News
If water is the next battleground for a globe facing dwindling water resources, then this 1960s-style community center at the northern end of Los Angeles’ Koreatown is at the forefront of the fight. On this day, Laura Allen, cofounder of Greywater Action, a group that encourages conserving and reusing household water, is in her fourth of a five-day workshop teaching Californians how to reclaim and recycle what has been dubbed “gray water.”

Typically, gray water includes the discharge from washing machines, sinks, showers, and tubs, which is then used to provide moisture for outdoor plants, from backyard rosebushes to large orchards. While progress has been made — many institutions, corporations, and municipalities around the world use gray water — activists say there’s still a long way to go. And it’s groups such as Greywater Action that are helping to drive change.

“Grass-roots efforts — seeing an issue and trying to do something by acting individually and being responsible stewards — are very important,” says Kathy Robb, founder and director of the Water Policy Institute in New York.

As an example, she points to the fact that before regulations in California were changed last August to make it legal for homeowners to install or alter a simple gray-water system without a construction permit, there were already an estimated 2 million unpermitted systems in the Golden State.

This is evidence, Ms. Allen says, that, given the opportunity, state residents will embrace the technology for both economic and environmental reasons.
‘Laundry to Landscape’ Systems

‘This is the way the world is going. We all need to learn to save water,” says Trent Cawthon, a handyman from Redondo Beach, Calif., who aspires to be a contractor and feels that expertise with gray-¬water systems will make his services more valuable.

Mr. Cawthon is part of a four-person team that has designed a simple “laundry-to-landscape” system. They will practice their skills at the community center, running plastic pipes from the laundry room to the front of the building, where the rinse water will irrigate four fruit trees. Cawthorn’s teammate, Allan Haskell from Echo Park, Calif., runs a green consulting business that helps restaurants find compostable containers for takeout food. He hopes to expand his business to encompass gray-water planning.

Diana Lawrence, a former urban planner, is attending the workshop because she hopes to downsize her utility bills through gray-water usage.

Landscape architect Robin Grabs of San Pedro, Calif., has come because two clients requested gray-water systems. It’s fascinating, she says, but the amount of information is overwhelming.

Allen understands this reaction. “Fitting all the important things that gray water brings into a five-day class and a manageable package is a challenge,” she says. The course has to cover plant and soil information, plumbing, and landscaping and design skills. It’s aimed at a wide range of users – from those who must work within small budgets to those with larger ambitions, as well as people who simply want to water the plants in their yard inexpensively and those who might have a large commercial landscape.

Legalization Boosts Demand

In the months since California changed the gray-water permit requirements, demand has begun to build statewide, says John Leys of Sherwood Design Engineers in San Francisco, which has clients across the United States as well as abroad.

Mr. Leys recently consulted on new ¬water-planning regulations for Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, which has water needs similar to those in the American Southwest.

‘Ten years ago, we were not seeing any demand for gray-water systems,” he says, but now clients of all types are requesting projects that range from simple and inexpensive backyard irrigation retrofits to complex, multipurpose gray-water systems that are part of the design from the beginning.
Leys notes that as pressures over drought regulations and energy conservation have started to build, many businesses have begun to see that reclamation and reuse make sense from both a business and an environmental standpoint.

For instance, if a development of 10,000 new homes reduces its overall potable water use by as much as 25 percent, he says, that means a huge savings in construction and utility costs.

Most of the momentum toward greater use of gray-water systems is not being driven by economics — yet. “But that is inevitable,” Leys says, “if you consider that despite the vast oceans covering the planet, less than 1 percent of the world’s water is both fresh and accessible for human use.”

He believes that it’s important to plan for solutions in advance of a water crisis, and that when and how that’s done will become critical.

Today, even with conventional water-supply strategies and technologies, water shortages are common in communities around the globe. The World Health Organization reports that more than 2 billion people — roughly 1 out of every 3 people on the planet — live in a water-stressed area.

Commenting on the importance of reclaiming and reusing water, Leys says: “History demonstrates that properly managed water resources can be the deciding factor in determining the habitability of an individual site, the sustainability of a community, or the survival of an entire civilization.”

With many companies around the world being under pressure to adopt environmentally-friendly practices while still reducing costs in challenging economic times, MTN South Africa has embarked on a mission to make its 14th Avenue head office completely environmentally friendly in the next two years.

The ‘Greening 14th Avenue’ initiative by MTN is being driven not by idealistic environmentalists, but by two senior executives who have combined their financial backgrounds with a passion for change that starts in MTN’s backyard. Now with approximately 17 million customers and thousands of employees across the country, MTN is set to give back and reduce its carbon footprint on a dramatic scale.

The idea for greening MTN started with taking a strategic, holistic view of the impact MTN has on the environment, and considering the processes to be followed to rectify this in an end-to-end manner rather than as a quick win initiative.

“Our main challenge was encapsulated in the questions: can we be environmentally friendly in our operations? And: what should we be doing about being greener?” says MTN chief financial officer Zunaid Bulbulia.

The initial analysis from the project team looking at greening MTN sought to address six environmental issues for the 14th Avenue head office: sustainable sites, energy consumption, water efficiency and quality, indoor environmental quality, innovation in design, and the recycling of material and resources.

“When we received the findings from our project team, we decided this would not be a project that gets put on the backburner,” Bulbulia says. “Our energy consumption is high, especially in our data centres, and we are emitting tons of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. We’re also using substantial amounts of water to cool and power our data centre.

But things are starting to change for the better. Today, MTN uses only what it calls “grey water” – recycled water – and is looking to expand such systems to improve cooling and indoor systems.

Furthermore, MTN is actively attempting to reduce the number of cars parking at its 14th Avenue headquarters. With 6 000 employees on campus, a significant number of them still opt to drive to work. The Phase Two parking area alone stretches as far as the N1 highway.

“When you see the numbers, you stop to think hard about what you can do,” continues chief financial officer Zunaid Bulbulia. “We are led to believe that 433 000 trees per year are being destroyed in our operations – that has to change!” In this regard, MTN is making further adjustments and today prints its brochures and booklets on recycled paper.

The first phase of the environmental sustainability project will be addressing the energy and water consumption, and procurement policy development to ensure the continuous procurement of green and environment friendly products; R1.5-million has already been earmarked for this leg of the project.

The more ambitious second phase will see MTN bringing in more capital intensive equipment such as solar panels for heating of water and energy production at a cost of up to R40-million. This leg of the project is scheduled to be completed within twelve months after completion of the first phase.

“We are the first listed company to issue a full sustainability report on the JSE as part of our company profile,” Bulbulia says. “We will now be the first in South Africa to convert an existing building to incorporate eco-friendly systems, and the first to seek the American LEED accreditation. Luckily it’s easier for us to convert as the 14th Avenue building belongs to us, but we’ll have to be more creative when we roll out to other spaces and engage with those building owners,” Bulbulia adds.

The much-revered LEED accreditation is traditionally an extremely tough certificate to attain and reflects that the holder has complied with stringent environmentally-friendly measures in its operations. If MTN is able to complete the project guided by the LEED recommendations, this initiative may serve as the blueprint for similar projects in South Africa.

As part of being proactive in this environment, MTN has also become a founding member of the Green Building Council of South Africa, which underscores its commitment to the improvement of the environment and to creating a better workplace for all employees.

“It’s very important that we establish and motivate for a project that is self-supporting. The commercial value we get back from going green makes up sufficiently for the initial investment,” Bulbulia says. “We’ve created an internal, dedicated structure to tackle the first phase of the greening project, so we should be able to get the results from the project team in February 2010. From there, we’ll implement phase one until June 2010,” Bulbulia adds.

Bulbulia believes there’s a 30 percent saving in using greener technology as opposed to relying power utility Eskom, which is planning a series of electricity hikes. The timing couldn’t have been any better.

“If we get our power usage down by about 30 percent, then we’ve achieved something tremendous,” Bulbulia says.

Water is South Africa’s most precious resource and one which requires the utmost conservation attention by industries where it is consumed in significant quantities. You can imagine that the car rental business is a high consumer of water and probably the highest in the service (non production) industry, where on average in South Africa, around 8000 vehicles are washed every day. That is a lot of water and most of this simply goes down the drain….., but not so at Avis.

When Avis set out to upgrade its major facilities at Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban airports over the past two years, a decision was made to invest in equipment and processes that would recycle the water used to wash it’s vehicles, thereby conserving this precious resource. This focus culminated in the following actions undertaken since 2008:-

1. The installation of car wash machines that took the least time possible and used the bare minimum of water to wash each vehicle. Here, Avis consulted with Garage Equipment Services who sourced the most modern drive through machines which washes a vehicle in approximately 45 seconds in a controlled manner which eliminates water wastage.

2. Avis further invested approximately R1,5 million to construct underground water filtration and recycling facilities at its three main depots (with more to follow). The used “grey” water is channeled and filtered to be over 90% clean and is re-pumped back into the system to wash the Avis vehicles. The only process requiring fresh municipal water is the final rinse arch at the end of the wash, ensuring that the vehicles come out spotless for final rental preparation. This “Final Rinse” water is also channeled into the recycling plant and in effect, the entire process reduces the Avis car wash water use by over 74%.

3. At an additional cost of R400,000, Avis’ installed at its new state of the art vehicle preparation yard at Cape Town International Airport (where there are significant periods of high rain fall), a 200,000 liter underground water reservoir, which captures the “free” and clean rain water run-off from the roofs of its main buildings and then uses this to feed into the car washing and water recycling facility.

As a result of the R1,9 million investment in its water recycling program at its three main depots, Avis estimates that they will save the environment (and their costs) almost just under 100 million liters of water per annum. This environmental protection project is just one of many programs undertaken at Avis, under the Avis Cares umbrella, which incorporates a 3-Pillar (Environment, Community and its People) sustainability approach to its business practice, driven from the Chief Executive through to the entire Brand Ambassador compliment within the organisation.