By Taylor Day
Water may be a resource that many of us take for granted. It’s been mislabeled as a renewable resource, when in reality, it’s not.
The Ohio State University has a goal to reduce potable water consumption by 5 percent, per person, every five years. The goal is part of university-wide sustainability goals.
Home to more than 100,000 students, faculty, staff and visitors each day, Ohio State is comparable to a large city. The university uses more than 1.3 billion gallons of water per year — enough to fill 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — there are plenty of places to start analyzing water use.
Brenda VanCleave, Ohio State’s water resource engineer with Facilities Operations and Development, oversees routine water audits and reduction efforts.
According to VanCleave, wastage and leaks are the two most prominent issues.
Once-through water is often one source of waste, as it is water that is used only one time then disposed of, even if the water is perfectly reusable.
“The university is focused on combatting once-through water practices as a means to reduce overall water usage,” says VanCleave.
VanCleave partnered with the College of Pharmacy on a new initiative to reduce once-through water waste thanks to a $73,000 grant from the Ohio State Sustainability Fund. The effort is focused on conserving water by changing lab equipment and has already resulted in annual water savings of 16 million gallons.
The College of Pharmacy recruited James Fuchs, associate professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy, to assist with the conversion because he had experience with similar initiatives.
Fuchs and others in the pharmacy labs use apparatuses called rotary evaporators (rotovaps) that separate organic chemicals from a mixture of compounds into their most basic forms.
The rotovaps require the use of water aspirators which create a vacuum by running water through a tube fitted on the faucet. The tube has a membrane inside, so when water moves through, it creates a pulling pressure. The running water, used continuously to maintain the vacuum, is sent directly down the drain.
“The amount of times we use this equipment and each step we go through really starts to multiply and mount up. It’s startling how much water we actually had to use to do the things we needed to,” says Fuchs, who is obviously passionate about finding ways to conserve water.
The college used the grant funding to invest in more efficient and sustainable equipment. They switched from the original faucet aspirators to vacuum pumps, so they no longer need water for that step. The financial cost of the technology change, less than $92,000, is minimal compared to that of the 16 million gallons of water saved, which cost the university an average of $150,000 per year.
“This one project could help the university achieve roughly one-quarter of its water conservation goal while providing a return-on-investment in less than one year,” VanCleave says.
To achieve the university’s water conservation goals, multiple departments are working together to incorporate water-saving technologies throughout campus. Improvements in infrastructure, leak detection and response, low-flow fixtures, smart irrigation and efficient water-use technologies will get the water moving in the right direction while creating awareness in the campus community of more sustainable uses for our water.
Do you have a campus sustainability project idea? Request information about Ohio State Sustainability Fund grants by contacting Mike Shelton at shelton.267@osu.edu or (614) 247-8071.
Taylor Day is a student communications assistant at the Sustainability Institute.