Category: Environment

Jan 08 2010

Water and Sanitation

What’s the difference?

Water Supply Service Level I vs. Level II vs. Level III

Level I (point source) is a protected well or a developed spring with an outlet but without a distribution system, generally adaptable for rural areas where the houses are thinly scattered.A Level I facility normally serves an average of 15 households.

Level II (communal faucet system or standposts) is a system composed of a source, a reservoir, a piped distribution network,and communal faucets. Usually, one faucet serves 4 to 6 households. Generally suitable for rural and urban fringe areas where houses are clustered densely to justify a simple piped system.

Level III (waterworks system or individual house connections) – a system with a source, a reservoir, a piped distribution network and household taps. It is generally suited for densely populated urban areas.

Sewer vs. Sewage vs. Sewerage

Sewer is a pipe, conduit or channel intended to convey sewage.

Sewage is a combination of the liquid or water-carried wastes from residences, business buildings, and institutions, together with those from industrial establishments, and with such ground water, surface water, and storm water may be present; also called wastewater.

Sewerage is system of pipes, pumps, devices and other appurtenant structures for the collection, transportation and final disposal of wastewater.
Read more »

Jan 07 2009

Measure your eco-footprint

Online calculators make it easy to gauge your impact on the environment

Is your lifestyle ecologically correct? Meaning, are you living an ecologically sustainable lifestyle that won’t put future generations at risk because it puts a strain on the earth’s resources? One of the steps you can take to ensure that you are living an ‘ecologically correct lifestyle is to know your ecological footprint, which is the estimated area of land and sea needed to support your consumption of food, goods, services, housing, and energy. It is usually expressed in terms of global hectares, and the number of planet earths needed to support the human population if everyone lived your kind of lifestyle. For example, if your eco-footprint is 2.5 earths, then it means that you aren’t leading an ecologically sustainable lifestyle, because the earth won’t be able to sustain its current population if everyone lived the same way that you do.

It is now easy to know the size of your ecological footprint by using online calculators. These calculators usually ask you a set of questions regarding your lifestyle, such as what kind of house you live in or what you eat. Your footprint is then calculated based on your answers to these questions. Here are two good calculators on the web:
Read more »