Neighbour, D. (2018, November 19). Recycled Water Could Solve Beijing’s Water Woes, But Implementation Falls Short. Retrieved from https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2018/11/recycled-water-solve-beijings-water-woes-implementation-falls-short-2/

In the mid-2000s Beijing depleted its local groundwater and nearby rivers. In 2014 they began to rely on water that was being shuttled over from south China. These, though solutions, are known to be short-term and very expensive. At last, water recycling was brought into the picture. Grey water or “middle water” as the Chinese call it, is non-potable water that can be used for landscaping, irrigation, flushing toilets, and replenishing groundwater. Unfortunately, only 20 percent of the city’s water is produced from recycling because commercial and residential decentralized water reuse systems are failing. A large reason to this is public distrust and lack of support since they believe the water quality is much poorer and they will opt out of having it in their building even if it is cheaper in price.

This article brought me back to something I learned about when I started to research this topic: the yuck factor. Many people fear that recycled water isn’t healthy. In the case of the 22 million Beijing citizens, that may be true since the faculties that run this process aren’t being maintained. What this community has to understand is that an agreement has to be made soon. The government has to begin to fund and pay for the recycling plants maintenance so that people trust the water and use it. This will help in the long run and they won’t deplete their surface water reserve. They all have to realize that not doing so will lead to a bigger expense in the future if they have to continue transporting water from other cities.