How RO Systems Contribute to Environmental Sustainability?
Climate change and environmental sustainability are pressing global issues. As consumers, we can have a positive collective impact through our daily choices and habits. An excellent but often overlooked sustainability action is installing a reverse osmosis water filtration system in your home.
RO effectively filters out water contaminants by pushing it through a semi-permeable membrane. This produces clean, purified water for drinking and cooking while reducing plastic waste and carbon emissions. In this article, we’ll look at several ways residential RO systems contribute to environmental sustainability.
Reducing Single-Use Plastic Bottle Waste
Plastic water bottle waste is a massive problem. The average American uses about 175 disposable plastic water bottles annually. With microplastics and chemical leaching concerns, this single-use plastic waste stream has huge sustainability impacts.
An under-sink or refrigerator RO system provides ultra purified water for pennies per gallon straight from the tap. Having unlimited RO water availability means no more need for disposable bottled water. This simple change dramatically lessens plastic waste for the average household.
If each American family replaced bottled water with a home RO system, it would eliminate over 30 billion plastic bottles from landfills and incinerators per year based on current statistics. The sustainability dividends from this shift are enormous.
Conserving Water Through Reuse
A valid criticism of RO systems is that the initial pressurized filtering process wastes water, with up to 4 gallons discarded for every purified gallon produced. However, an RO system connected to a storage tank prevents true waste since none of the water is disposed down the drain.
The discarded concentrate gets repurposed for non-consumptive uses like gardening, washing, and flushing toilets. This reuse turns the concentrate into a resource instead of a waste. Having an RO system incentivizes reducing overall water consumption since you must consciously repurpose the excess.
The net result is conserved water usage compared to alternatives like bottled water or water delivery which add more transportation waste. For those on private wells, the conservation impact is especially notable since RO efficiently utilizes well capacity.
Energy Efficiency Benefits
Replacing bottled water delivery with a residential RO system also yields energy and emissions savings. Bottling and transporting water requires massive amounts of energy for pumping, cleaning, bottling in plastic, and fuel for distribution.
Home RO systems connected to existing water lines eliminate this supply chain. The only additional energy use is a minor amount of water pump pressure. Overall carbon emissions drop dramatically when bottled water is displaced by residential RO.
Additionally, detergent and energy savings from water softening is another underrecognized RO system benefit. Removing hardness minerals requires less soap for washing and lowers scale buildup in water heating equipment for energy savings.
Optimizing for Sustainability
To make your reverse osmosis system even more eco-friendly:
- Use the concentrate output for irrigation or other household reuse. Never send to waste if possible. Some systems have auto-shutoff to prevent concentrate loss.
- Look for high efficiency models that recycle some of the brine back into the system for improved water conservation.
- Choose electricity-free systems that use water pressure instead of pumps. This reduces overall energy demands.
- Maintain the system well so membrane life is maximized. This reduces long term waste from replacements.
- When replacing filters, dispose of them properly for recycling, not landfilling. Some companies will take back used filters.
- Consider buying carbon offsets to balance out any net energy use, shipping impacts, or non-reusable parts.
Conclusion
Given the major sustainability benefits of reduced plastic waste, conserved water, energy savings, and more, residential reverse osmosis systems are truly one of the greenest appliances you can add to a home. Beyond just producing cleaner drinking water, RO systems have cascading positive environmental impacts when implemented on a wide scale. Accelerating the growth of residential RO would make a major contribution toward critical sustainability goals.
Netsol Water is Greater Noida-based leading water & wastewater treatment plant manufacturer. We are industry's most demanding company based on client review and work quality. We are known as best commercial RO plant manufacturers, industrial RO plant manufacturer, sewage treatment plant manufacturer, Water Softener Plant Manufacturers and effluent treatment plant manufacturers. Apart from this 24x7 customer support is our USP. Call on +91-9650608473, or write us at enquiry@netsolwater.com for any support, inquiry or product-purchase related query.