How to Save TONS of Water, to Save the Planet

Travel across the country, away from populated areas and tell me we are over populated. India can feed itself but barely, and they have some of the highest population per acre in the world. The US has food to spare for many countries. People congregate toward people. We group into cities and for strength in numbers. We have just developed vertical farming so we can grow enough food to feed the world. We can build upward as well so there are a number of Manhattans around the world and due to people congregating as they will do we don't have to worry about using up the land.

I've never understood why the notion of pursuing efficiency with respect to consumption and resources is controversial. Granted there can be trade-offs between efficiency and cost, but there many areas where efficiency can be improved without increasing cost. I guess I do understand why advocating for efficiency like this is controversial. Yep, politics. Of course the irony is that it is the folks that have an over strong notion of politics who back feed their own bias into sensible inquiry and dialog. This happens from every direction and angle of course! Still down here in the US, where we like to focus on money so much, one would think that everyone would embrace the pursuit of efficiency since when efficiency can be increased this often leads to cost savings and economic advantage. Odd really that we have such a large political contingent that treats conservation as some radical leftist agenda. Of course, if you lift the covers on what large corporations are doing you will see all sorts of changes over the last decade related to simple forms of energy and water conservation- automatic water faucets, timers that turn off office lights, etc. These folks don't do this stuff for political reasons. They do these things because it saves money. For a country that seems to love "common sense" it seems so odd and sad that the simple notion of "don't use more than you need" is so politically charged.

Great video with valid points Mehdi, my fellow unibrowed kooky comrade. As you momentarily mentioned Global Warming, had you ever considered the greatest benefit of our current over-population? Like the serpentine belt on the motor of most cars, the Earth's Ocean Conveyor Belt circles and twists over and over providing the Thermohaline Circulation to deliver warmth towards the direction of our northern polar cap and acts like a check valve to keep that polar cap from freezing out of control and marshaling in the next ice age. The salinity of the oceans and differences in ocean temperatures are the main drivers needed to maintain proper Thermohaline Circulation. The melting of the polar caps has greatly diluted the salinity of the ocean resulting in a measurable sluggish declining circulation flow strength. As a child in the 70s, the Northwest Passage was just a fable and some scientists argued it never existed. I do hope to one day book onto one of the cruise lines currently touring the Northwest Passage. So you ask what is the great benefit of our current over-population? Well, enough of the polar caps has already melted releasing all that fresh water and noticeably diluted the salinity of the oceans so that we should have been experiencing early stages of out of control polar cap freezing but a wonderful percentage of fresh water remained on land in the form of humans who are mostly water. A good old-fashioned mass extinction will be needed to revert and redirect the fresh water from humans back into the environment if melted polar caps need more contributing factors. Ever wonder why U.S. history does not span tens of Millennia as European history does? Silly caldera under Yellowstone kept going off hitting the reset button but that may not be enough of a mass extinction but the projected global cloud cover may do the trick. As I've always told my kids, please find your own answers, research key terms on your own, establish your own correlation. In the meantime, i'll take your advice and subscribe to Patreon as I really need and can use one of them Keysite oscilloscopes.

Hector Rivera

@Andrius Raulinaitis, thanks for the explanation. We should still find a way to make this happen one way or another. In the UK PVC pipes are used more often especially in new builds, so this tackles the corrosion issue from a residential perspective. Essentially we need to come together and work out solutions to these problems and not just stick to the ‘status quo’ How about with new build we have them designed in a way to utilise rain water for flushing....in the UK it rains for most of the year! So let’s all be positive and think of solutions rather then dwell on the problems. 👍

I'm in Washington state, USA. They've made it illegal here to collect more than one 55 gallon drum of rainwater. They say the state owns it.

Steven J Greenfield

Agree with that - I hate waste - even of "common" stuff like iron/aluminium. we should recycle *everything* where possible and eliminate stuff that is not recyclable - esp plastics... everything will run out eventually

Or maybe be wary of the finite resources of the earth and conserve even if they aren't on the edge of extinction?

Dope! Hopefully you make one about saving energy next, like installing power strips/ dimmers and all that.

You can just add salt and minerals to the flush tank and make it like sea water to flush. Who needs actual sea water?

Dibya Jyoti Roy

We could but there are some issues to work out first. Salt water is much more detrimental to pipes and materials, so that would have to be evaluated (corrosion, etc.). Also if you had salt water for toilets but fresh/potable water for faucets/showers, you'd need to run double the amount of piping to each home, and much more piping inside each home, which would be a huge infrastructure upgrade as well as just a lot of parts to add to every house

So 97% is sea water......don’t mean to sound silly here but could we not use sea water to flush the toilets with?? And fresh water for everything else.

Almost died from wipers community joke.

be really wary of some of those chicken licken reports about stuff running out - many news outlets have an agenda... read this <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/energy_economics_coal/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/energy_economics_coal/</a>

I like electroboom for his expertise mainly; But I also feel that his humor helps a lot for beginners and people just getting into electronics, but not having humor can be just as efficient if your trying to appeal to a more "professional" crowd, but a little sarcasam goes a long way. A fantastic example of this concept in action is done by a YouTuber by the name of Great Scott, who does almost the same thing as electroboom, but with a more technical side to his circuits. Look him up real quick, you might like him :)

One idea I seen suggested many times in the past is using rainwater for flushing toilets. It is surprising just how much rainwater comes down the gutter, at least here in Ireland. As for my water conservation, I replace about 250 litres of water in our fish tanks each week, sourced from our outdoor waterbutt. It only takes about 30 minutes of moderate rainfall to refill the waterbutt and I've access to a natural spring for the rare occasion where we don't have rain all week. As for the 250 litres I take out of the fish tanks, including from rinsing the filters and gravel, I water the garden vegetables during the spring/summer. Very effective fertiliser as waste fish water and gunk from the filters and gravel are full of nitrates.

Seán Byrne

I like how you're branching out from just electronics. Too bad you had to destroy that poor actuator. I'm a water/wastewater engineer, and I thought of making videos like yours but I couldn't figure out how to make them funny. If there's anything I can do to help in this area, I would be happy to. Also, been a patron for like two years now, and both my meters are broken. I could really use one at some point. ;-)

King Parker

Great idea, i will upgrade my motorhome with some foot switches.

Huge fan of what you're doing.. I've recently bought a house and I was asking myself how to save on wqter electricity and everything now I have one of my answer thanks.

OK, now to convince the rest of the family!

Hey Mehdi, One of your neighbors to the South figured out how to save some more water! Since Californians keep letting their forests burn, this guy on Twitter says he'll stop sending them federal dollars to fight forest fires in national parks. No money for fires, no fireman. If we stop supporting firefighters, they'll stop spraying water everywhere! This is brilliant! Isn't it? I would post a link to the plan but you don't want to get political, right? You don't want to force people to quit patreon do you? People like that guy last week who quit you because you mentioned shoddy climate change science that reminded him about New Earth Creationism... science .🤔. Save water! Be Stupid

Jim

The worse thing for me is I have a combination boiler(not sure if it's called the same everywhere) and if I'm in the kitchen which is furthest from the boiler I have to run the hot tap for soooo long before the hot water finally arrives, I thought about one of those electric heaters to make it warm up quicker but with the amount of electric they use I'm just replacing the waste of one thing for wasting another...........maybe I should use recycled paper plates instead, no wasted water and no washing up so it's win win haha

Pete Golding

Oh wait Wrong person but nice video

eyyy Hi PewdiePie

thanks for taking on these subjects of overpopulation and waste of natural rescources. And having been a biologist in college I have been harping on this problem of loosing species every year due to more people taking their native territory for our use. I worked with some groups way back in the 70's to support replace youself but don't add more than you need to replace your self and spouse. Two kids. In those days is was guys had the responsibility to have a vasectomy. Well not for me,,, but those true to the cause. I am a great supporter of water conservation at the home. If I had the time and money I would do like some off the grid people do. Start with fresh water and have all the waste go to a grey water tank for the toilet and such. Then the final waste heads out. Not into recycling that. If you want to irrigate, then dig a well and use ground water that will go back into the ground except for what evaporates. I do believe we are headed for some real problems in years to come. I'm 69 now and not my problem much longer but I have been active in save the world thru using your brain. Just not enough people to support the cause.

It was interesting watching the clock behind you jump between shots. Another fact I discovered is that you are naturally a fast speaker and your video was not sped up. Also there was no booger in your measuring cups which makes me question the validity of your observation! You rock.

Bahram Dahi

But can't we solve that problem by injecting say seawater into the system? I mean we don't need to run clean water to unclog things, do we?

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

in the video description, I put it here too.

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

One should keep in mind that aggressively saving water in normal households in normal cities as of today might not be an exclusively good thing, there are a few downsides. At least here in Germany the sewer system somewhat depends on constant minimum throughput of water. If there is not enough water parts get clogged and don’t function properly. Since everybody is saving water to save money and most devices also use less water in general, the throughput has decreased over the recent 10 years or so. This is bad for parts of the sewer system and makes increased maintenance necessary. This raises costs and customers pay for that at the end via price increased per liter etc. The sewer system has to be improved to be optimized for less throughput.

raytsh

Would really like that scope. Having trouble finding that Google form though. Maybe I'm stupid...

That's true, but I guess every bit helps. AND using less water actually saves money for the home owner too, so win-win!

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

Kudos for tackling topics like this! You are an educator and should try your best to have an impact in this world. Sure, household consumption is not the largest contributor to our current fresh water situation (you mentioned the T-Shirts, and feeding 10 billion people also means having to change agricultural practices). Having a sustainable planet where we can all live in decent conditions is what everyone should strive for.

Hi Mehdi. Good idea for an engineers house. And I say that as an engineer with my own set of quirks and crazy tendencies. However, looking at the Pareto, agricultural use of water vastly overshadows any domestic uses. And even of the domestic uses, landscaping comprises a huge chunk. Low hanging fruits like more efficient fixtures are always a great idea, but electrically actuated valves at every tap might be overkill. Especially when there are much greater gains to be reaped by increasing efficiency in the larger consumers. Much love, and keep up the good work. -Shab

Here you go: [∿]

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

Can I have scope please?