Water grids are ruinously expensive to build and maintain. Treating wastewater in the home is a practical alternative – if we can get over the yuck factor
IN A garden shed called Stanley on the bank of a muddy pond, Darren Reynolds is about to have a drink. The pond's less-than-limpid waters would normally flow through the surrounding reed beds to a drainage channel. Reynolds, however, is pouring himself a perfectly clear glassful.
What's in his shed gives him reasonable confidence in what he is doing: it contains a mini treatment plant that can produce drinkable water on demand. Conceived for places with no fixed water infrastructure, such as refugee camps, Reynolds thinks that with a little tweaking it could be just the thing for more suburban locales, too.
A professor of health and the environment at the University of the West of England in Bristol, Reynolds is ...
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