Grey Water
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| Using greywater on your garden will help you save water and money |
After several years of record-breaking droughts, Australians are now more aware than ever of the need to conserve water through smarter use. Greywater offers an additional resource to help people go one step further in the effort to save water.
By using greywater on gardens and lawns, a household has the potential to save between 50,000 and 100,000 litres of drinking water a year.
What is Greywater?
Greywater is generated from using your shower, bath, laundry, handbasin, kitchen sink and dishwasher – it doesn’t include water from the toilet, urinal or bidet.
How can I use Greywater?
We don’t require drinking quality water to do everything around the home. Watering the garden and flushing the toilet, for example, are just as effective using greywater. By capturing some of our wastewater and re-using it we can reduce the strain on our town water supply and save money on our water bills.
Using greywater can be as simple as bucketing it out by hand into the garden (cheap but a little labour intensive), or as complex as installing an automatic diversion, treatment and irrigation system (very convenient but more costly to set up).
If you want to re-use greywater inside the home, treatment systems are necessary and council approval would be required to do this.
Is it safe to use Greywater?
Yes. If it is used in the appropriate way. Grey water can contain certain disease-causing micro organisms, fats, oils, detergents, salt and other things derived from household and personal cleaning activities. However, if properly used, these pose little threat to health and the environment.
An effective way to improve the quality of your greywater is to change the type of detergents, soaps and cleaning products you use in the house. You can find out about this in more detail by clicking on the links to the right.
We have compiled a comprehensive information resource (see links to the right), which takes you through, step by step, the issues and safeguards involved in using greywater. It certainly requires a little more effort from householders to organize greywater re-use but the benefits can be worthwhile.