Desalinising Dreams

This is an obscure post that will undoubtedly offend the faint hearted and those with little appreciation for ‘boring’ subject matter. I apologise now.

Today I’m feeling good about myself. I just bagged up two loads of empty plastic bottles and carted them off to the local recycling bin. Feeling environmentally smug I then proceeded to go for the double, because I then used the same two plastic bags the bottles were in to take my shopping home. How brilliant am I?

Not very it would seem. I’m sitting here now doing my reading, sipping periodically from my bottle of chilled Evian. Not wishing to tame my wondering mind I got thinking about this bottle of Evian. Water. Mineral water. From France. In a plastic bottle. Transported here. And I’m drinking it.

I am not so much concerned with the carbon footprint of this bottle as I am with what it contains. Water from a finite fresh water source. I am sure that the company behind Evian ensures that it extracts a sufficient amount to keep its profits rolling at a sustainable level for a good number of years, but I doubt it is fully sustainable in the long run nor do I suspect it is entirely safe from even slight variations in rainfall that might be caused as part of global climate change. But they are not the only ones tapping their water from shrinking freshwater sources. Most of the world is facing a fresh water shortage of some sort and I even read somewhere that many people predict that wars in the future will be predominately fought either directly or indirectly over water supply.

This seems incredible when you consider that the other danger facing mankind is a rise in sea levels – too much water – that is threatening hundreds of millions of people in low lying areas. Surely a growth industry over the next one hundred years will be the treatment of salt water into fresh drinking water. A process known as desalination.

The technology is incredibly expensive (and has one or two environmental hitches, but none that are not overcome with a little preplanning) and requires massive upfront investment with only long term pay back prospects. Yet it does happen, and predictably it happens most in areas with a hotter climate, Saudi Arabia, for example produces 24% of the world’s desalinated water.

This has got me excited. I sense another way in which someone might help save the world and get rich at the same time. As a lonely fourteen year old I drew out elaborate plans to create my own ‘solar’ company. Now I feel that I missed the boat, any such company established in … what would have been 1998, could surely be sold on now, in an atmosphere of alternative energy frenzy, at a fair old sum – with or without evidence of much profit.

Now I once again feel I have stumbled across a misguided path to morally satisfying riches. If anyone wants to go halves on a fifty million pound (solar?) desalination plant off the coast of Africa somewhere – the output of which could be cleverly bottled and marketed towards the western ‘consumer conscious’ market – let me know.