"It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days."
I live in California and am required to water a lawn as a renter with my drinking water. Turf grass may not need drinking water, but I’d guess the portion of water used for grass that is recycled is not particularly high.
You may also be surprised about what makes water “drinking water”. There’s a water project in San Diego that is aiming to close the water loop by purifying all wastewater using RO and UV, to the point that it is lab-quality pure water. It’s illegal to add minerals to it and pump it into the municipal water supply. They have to discharge it into a river first and let it have a certain “residence time” in an open air reservoir. The water we drink here isn’t much more than lake water, and far less clean than the water that can be made by recycling wastewater.
I live in California and am required to water a lawn as a renter with my drinking water. Turf grass may not need drinking water, but I’d guess the portion of water used for grass that is recycled is not particularly high.
You may also be surprised about what makes water “drinking water”. There’s a water project in San Diego that is aiming to close the water loop by purifying all wastewater using RO and UV, to the point that it is lab-quality pure water. It’s illegal to add minerals to it and pump it into the municipal water supply. They have to discharge it into a river first and let it have a certain “residence time” in an open air reservoir. The water we drink here isn’t much more than lake water, and far less clean than the water that can be made by recycling wastewater.