Waste Water, Want Water

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This Living Machine at the ZGF-designed Port of Portland headquarters treats all the wastewater for the building and made better financial sense than rainwater collection, say the designers.

By Paula Melton

Walk into almost any highway rest area bathroom in the U.S., and what do you hear? The constant whine of hand dryers and an equally constant drone of high-pressure flush after flush after flush. Before you grab that cuppa and get back in your car, stop and think: from this building in the middle of nowhere, devoted almost exclusively to the disposal of human pee and poop, where do those toilets flush to?

Our wastewater infrastructure is largely invisible and little understood. Most of us never question the wisdom of polluting pristine drinking water, losing valuable nitrogen and irreplaceable phosphorus in the process, just so we can make our poop disappear. Our own waste is a classic SEP—Somebody Else’s Problem.

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