Water recycling in office buildings is seen as a promising sustainability effort, as well as a smart hedge against rising costs and future shortages.
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
When Salesforce Tower in San Francisco fully reopens this year after 16 months of pandemic-induced closure, one of its more unusual features will be found in the basement.
A series of pipes and cast-in-concrete holding tanks, arrayed on two levels in the parking garage like some hidden microbrewery, will take the dirty water generated by the structure’s daily operations through a six-step filtration process and return it as clean, nonpotable water for use in toilets and drip irrigation.
Taking up the space of 16 cars, the black-water system, so called because it treats all wastewater, including from toilets and showers, will filter an estimated 30,000 gallons per workday, or 7.8 million a year. The system, the most comprehensive of its kind in a high-rise tower in the nation, is designed for people to visit — each step of the process is labeled, said Amanda von Almen, head of sustainable built environment at Salesforce.
The water-recycling effort is gaining traction as a severe drought punishes industries in states like California, Montana, New Mexico and Utah.
The concept isn’t new, but it’s increasingly seen as a promising sustainability push, especially as more cities and states enact measures to limit water use, and as a smart hedge against rising water costs and future shortages.
Park Habitat, an office tower that will include a black-water recycling system when it is built in downtown San Jose, Calif., is made for a world where droughts are an everyday reality, said Andrew Jacobson, the head of development for Westbank, the project’s developer.
Water-conservation advocates say such technology is where solar and renewable power were a decade ago: technologically feasible, with pioneering projects starting to bend the cost curve and push the concept toward wider accessibility.
