by Alex Kee

Created on: October 02, 2008

Realize it or not, we drink recycled water everyday.

There are no new water; only recycled water as the amount of water on planet Earth is fixed from the Juraisic Age.

Fresh water is recycled by the Hydrological Cycle with compliments from the Sun that evaporates water from the Earth's surface and returning the distilled water as precipitation: rain, snow, hailstones etc.

Harvested precipitation: rainwater and melt snow are therefore two of the purest form of "recycled water" that Nature provides for our sustenance when no other sources of potable water are available.

To render harvested precipitation potable, the easiest is to simply heat treat it: boil or pasteurize (65C for at least 6 minutes). Alternatively, chlorinate it with common household bleach (5.25% Sodium Hypochlorite, unscented if possible) at the ratio of 1 to 3 drops per liter of water, let it stand for at least 15minutes before consuming it.

If you have access to UV(Ultra Violet) or O3 (Ozone) water treatment gadgets, these may be used to treat water to make it potable.

In the event you do not have access to rain or snow, other sources of recycled water for drinking in emergency setting will be dew, fruits, vegetables.

The distillation of any type of water, urine included could also yield high quality potable water that can be drunk without further treatment.

Do not however, distill any water that contains volatile distillates that evaporates below the boiling point of water that will condense and become incorporated into the distilled water that you are going to harvest and consume later.

Recycling drinking water from questionable sources of water could also be employed through the use of RO (Reverse Osmosis) machines.

RO machines are nothing more than super fine mesh water filters that could filter as fine as 0.03microns, fine enough to filter off even bacteria and dissolved minerals.

While we do drink "recycled water" everyday as a matter of course, I would not recommend the drinking of recycled water other than harvested rain or melt snow that had been heat treated to render them potable.

In an emergency, it is handy to know how to convert alternate sources of water into potable water and we ought not be too put off by having to drink recycled water, when in fact that is what we had been consuming all these while.

Moreover, when life and death is separated by just that critical cup of rehydrating liquid, recycling seems the only smart pro-life choice!

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