The water you drink from the tap has previously been drunk by humans up to 10 times, as the wastewater continuously goes through one of two different cycles before making a complete loop back to your sink’s faucet.
The water on Earth today is the same water that has been here for almost five billion years, which means you drink dinosaur urine too, but the water that flows in your area is recycled through the same bike facilities over and over again – and between your homes mixed and everyone else.
Once you’ve rid your body of the water, it embarks on a journey to the sewage treatment plant where it’s purified for direct use, or it takes another route to a natural body of water that flows into the sea before making it to your home returns.
While humans have been separating waste and water for thousands of years, it wasn’t until the early 21st century that humans perfected the technology that enables safe drinking water.
After the water from the tap is consumed, it flows into a sewer line that leads to the area’s sewage treatment plant, where it is either purified for human use or released into the environment
The number of people who drank the water before you is calculated using a formula: Urine ratio = (total water urinated)/(total water) = (total biomass of vertebrates ever lived* urinary rate)/(total water) = (average biomass of vertebrates * Rate of urine per year * years of vertebrates) / (total water).
According to economics. com, the inputs are: The 350 million year urinary ration of 5 billion tons of wet vertebrates urinating eight times their body weight per year is equivalent to 14,000 million cubic miles of urine.
“This means that the atoms in an average water molecule were already about 10 times more concentrated urine. And that’s a conservative estimate,” the blog post reads.
The beginning of the Bronze Age, which started around 3200 B.C. was when humans began reusing wastewater for irrigation and aquaculture, a practice found among ancient civilizations in China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
Roman systems for collecting rainwater from roofs for domestic use were also discovered in cities such as Pompeii, which was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in AD 74.
People living in Germany and France in the 13th century built fishponds to hold nutrient-rich sewage drained from abbey latrines.
The 19th century also saw the inadvertent reuse of sewage in various countries through the operation of sewage treatment plants originally designed for sanitary purposes, where sewage was applied to land to benefit from its fertilizing value.
Today the world is using more sophisticated methods to turn wastewater into drinking water, which is basically a never-ending cycle.
The beginning of the Bronze Age, which started around 3200 B.C. (pictured) was when humans began reusing wastewater for irrigation and aquaculture, a practice found among ancient civilizations in China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia
There are two different cycles that water can go through before it flows out of the tap: the urban water cycle and the natural water cycle.
When water flows through a municipal water cycle, it is first treated at a facility and then sent to your home.
After the water from the tap is consumed, it flows into a sewer line that leads to the area’s sewage treatment plant, where it is either purified for human use or released into the environment.
The water discharged into a river is likely to flow to another body of water, which feeds a drinking water facility where the urban water cycle begins anew.
If it does not flow to a plant, the water ends up in the sea for the natural water cycle or evaporates in the air.
Marine life consumes seawater several times before it evaporates to form clouds in the sky, and then this water falls back to earth as rain during condensation.
This precipitation can re-enter the urban water cycle, or flow into rivers and lakes, or seep into groundwater sources – and the process starts all over again.
Today’s process is fundamentally different from the way our ancestors treated their wastewater.
In China, for example, they collected urine from toilets and separated it to fertilize farmland, according to a 2018 study published in Frontiers.
Pictured is a wastewater treatment plant that sends water through purification systems before sending it back to your home
In other regions of the world, the primary purpose of urine separation has been to obtain a dry, manageable, and hygienic fecal fraction.
For example, in warm-climate Yemen, urine is separated in simple toilets and dripped onto an exterior wall of buildings, where it quickly evaporates.
Also in Shibam, Yemen, toilets had two sockets; one in front and the other behind to separate urine from feces since 750 AD.
However, the modern world has provided advanced technology to separate the waste from the water.
These include microfiltration, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis membranes; the use of ozone in conjunction with biological filtration, low, medium and high energy UV disinfection; high-energy UV-advanced oxidation,” the 2018 study states.
These treatments can eliminate both acute toxicity and chronic toxicity.