Keep your trees happy with greywater and plant-friendly soaps

Presenter: The KEPW program Talk Is Cheap recently interviewed an expert on greywater about the many benefits to fish and trees from reusing water from our homes. Here’s KEPW producer Curtis Blankinship:

Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): All right, I’m here with Laura Allen of Greywater Action. What does Greywater Action do?

Laura Allen (Greywater Action): So, Greywater Action, we’re an educational nonprofit and we teach people how to simply reuse water. We focus on what I call low-tech or simple designs that we like to educate about all the options of how to reuse water. We do greywater mostly, but we also teach people about rainwater harvesting and waterless toilets.

[00:00:39] We’re trying to reduce barriers for using this resource, and so we have a lot of resources on our website. We do workshops and trainings, so we train professionals and on our website, we have a list of people who are trained.

[00:00:51] So we’re trying to kind of connect the dots of like homeowners, if they’re do-it-yourselfers, giving them the resources so they can put in these systems themselves; if they’re not, so they can find people. We work with regulators trying to make regulations safe and with fewer barriers so these systems can be affordable.

[00:01:08] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): And this is both greywater and rainwater?

[00:01:10] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): No, they’re regulated quite differently. Rainwater falls from the sky, it’s very clean. If you catch it, make sure the water doesn’t get dirty going into your tank, you can store it and use it later. And the regulations are quite simple for that, usually, though, of course, it depends on your situation. Without a permit, you can store, I believe it’s up to 5,000 gallons and use that without spraying it. You know, there’s guidelines around that, but there are ways to simply and legally use rainwater.

[00:01:36] Greywater is a different source of water, so that’s water that you already used in your home. You like washed your hands with it, so it’s coming from sinks, showers, baths, and washing machines. Greywater is not potable. You don’t want to drink it, so it is a little bit dirty, but if you’re managing what soaps you use, then you can use it for irrigation.

[00:01:57] There are simple ways you can take that water, like, from your laundry machine and just redirect it without even changing your plumbing so you don’t need a plumbing permit. You can redirect it outside.

[00:02:07] Regulations around greywater really vary state by state. Some states don’t require any permitting for really simple systems, just guidelines of how to do it safely, whereas other states like Oregon requires a mail-in permit with the Department of Environmental Quality. So, you have to outline your system, how you’re doing it, complying with basic health and safety guidelines, and then you can get a permit for that through the state.

[00:02:32] There’s different guidelines to help you make your system, so it’s not going to cause problems for yourself or for other people. Make sure you’re not too close to creeks, for example, because you could pollute a creek if you put greywater into it, or too close to your neighbor’s property… It’s dirty. It’s gone through the slimy pipes, but for your plants, it’s a great source of irrigation water.

[00:02:51] So there’s precautions like keeping it underground so it comes out below the ground so no one would accidentally contact that water, but the plants can benefit from it.

[00:03:00] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): What soaps to use?

[00:03:02] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): Yeah, soaps is really important consideration. Phosphorus is a nutrient great for plants, there’s also nitrogen and organic matter that breaks down that is nutrients and when we put nutrients into our landscape, we call that fertilizer. That’s good for our plants. But if those nutrients go into the river, the creek, the ocean, that causes algae to grow, that’s pollution.

[00:03:21] Greywater does have low levels of nutrients in it, going to your plants is a good thing, whereas we don’t want that to get into the creeks or rivers.

[00:03:30] The other consideration with greywater is salts. Salts and boron, those are two things that are often in cleaning products and possibly laundry detergents. They’re nontoxic. You know, we put salt on our food, ocean’s full of salt. Boron is nontoxic also in terms of like harming things out in the water systems, but it is a microtoxin to plants. And if salt builds up, that can damage your plants.

[00:03:55] So greywater has this really unique consideration. I like to call products ‘plant-friendly’ because it’s a little different than just being like biodegradable or ecological or, you know, say ‘ocean-safe’ or ‘human-safe.’ For example, the salts—that’s totally fine for us, but not good for our plants.

[00:04:12] So we want to use plant-friendly products. They aren’t too hard to find, you just have to know what to look for. If you’re in your laundry detergents, you’re going to use liquid laundry detergents or an alternative detergent.. What you’re not going to use is a powdered detergent because those are full of salts.

[00:04:28] If you’re using the right products when your plants, get good irrigation and dry climate during our dry summers, they are really happy. So it’s a great way to keep your plants thriving in a dry climate without using extra potable water.

[00:04:42] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): Right, and even though we have a lot of rain here in Oregon, we still have a sort of a water shortage here.

[00:04:48] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): Yeah, so greywater, it does a couple of things. It’s a great way to conserve water. In Mediterranean climates where you have a rainy season and a dry season, the dry season around here is when the plants really grow and it’s warmer, and you need more water.

[00:04:59] So when we’re using water that we already used, we’re getting a double use out of it. So that can cut back on how much water we’re bringing into our homes. Because now, instead of using like a certain number of gallons to wash your laundry, plus gallons to water your fruit trees, now you’re taking that laundry water and going straight to your fruit trees. So you get the benefit of less water is being needed in the dry season.

[00:05:22] The other benefit in this area is for fish. Like, the rivers, they get warm, the flows are lower and it’s warmer, and when we’re discharging greywater to our wastewater treatment plant and they clean it and they put it back in the river, that water is warmer than it would be otherwise. And that’s not good for fish.

[00:05:38] So, if we can keep that warm water out of the rivers and put it into our landscapes and grow food or shelter or habitat or shade, then we’re getting all these benefits with that water instead of having it cause a problem somewhere else.

[00:05:53] Greywater is a great example of something that many people can do. Of course, it depends on your site. It’s like one tool in the toolbox, that plus rainwater, plus maybe waterless toilets, ways to safely process our human manure in other ways than septics or sewer treatment plants.

[00:06:09] You know, there’s all these different strategies and it’s important for us to have that information and look at where is this going to work best. ‘Cause there are alternatives and maybe in some communities, greywater is really going to cut way back and grow all these things that are needed. Maybe other communities, it’s not going to work as well, but it’s a great tool and it can work in many places.

[00:06:28] The best in my opinion—and I’ve been using greywater for over 20 years, I’ve written two books on it, I’ve taught many workshops and trainings, and I’ve lived with it in my own home and several homes and built systems with groups, done studies—so I have a lot of experience. And what I recommend now, after all those years and all that experience is: In your own home, you take your greywater, and you send it right out, below ground, to your plants.

[00:06:53] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): I’m talking with Laura Allen of Greywater Action and they’ll help you, advise you on putting a greywater system in. All right, so let’s get into details of what is someone going to entail when they get into a greywater system.

[00:07:08] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): Yeah, there’s many ways to use greywater. So I’ll tell you my favorite way: from the laundry machine. You do have to have a washing machine for this, which has a pump in it. And so you can use that pump to your advantage to actually pump out the water to where you want it to go.

[00:07:21] And you can tap into it without changing your household plumbing, which is a big advantage because sometimes the house is really easy to get to the plumbing and change things. Other times it’s very difficult, very expensive. With the laundry machine you don’t have to do that.

[00:07:33] So if you’re standing in front of your machine, there’s a discharge hose where the dirty water pumps out. You literally just pick that up, grab it, it’s usually sticking in a standpipe or into a utility sink, and you can hold it and you’re going to connect a diverter valve right to that discharge hose of the machine.

[00:07:51] That valve will be mounted by your machine and it allows you to send the water back to where it used to go, wherever that was, sewer or septic. And then when you turn the handle of your valve, now it’s going to go out to your new greywater system, which you build.

[00:08:03] And so you use a series of tubes and pipes to send that water out to your landscape. So when the machine is now pumping out water, you’re using greywater-friendly soaps. It’s now going directly out. Maybe you’ve determined you can water five fruit trees and it’s watering your five fruit trees.

[00:08:18] In the landscape you have created what’s called a mulch basin. So basically, if you have, let’s say there’s an apple tree that you’re watering. In front of the apple tree, you have created an in-ground filter using wood chips. It’s very simple and it works very well.

[00:08:32] You just dig a little trench kind of in the drip line of the tree, like, where the branches end. Dig a little trench, fill it with wood chips, and that’s where your greywater is going to flow through. It filters out lint and debris. It can kind of flow out into that basin and slowly sink down over time.

[00:08:48] And now you’ve created like a watering trough for your tree. So every time you do laundry, now your tree plus the others are going to be getting irrigation.

[00:08:58] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): All right. And so how much of that is permitted, though?

[00:09:01] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): On Greywater Action’s website, we have what’s, I’ll call it a standard plan. It’s basically our interpretation of the Oregon code. And we worked with the state, you know, they have kind of signed off on it and we worked together to create, like, a fill-in-the-blank form for people.

[00:09:16] So the information they need, like: Where is the property and how much water and where are you sending it? And kind of basic info, like: Are there any drinking water wells? And if so you need to be a certain distance away from them, and are there any creeks? And if so, you need to be a certain distance away.

So it gets that information so your system is going to work well and not cause any problems and then you mail it in to the state and then they give you the permit.

[00:09:39] And we have a manual, it’s a free download on our website in English and Spanish, so you can download and it has all of those details. There’s many more things you need to think about, like: How far can you go and what turns do you make and how do you prevent clogging? You know, those are things that would be just so boring to talk about on the radio, but they’re important.

[00:09:57] So I recommend going to our website, greywateraction.org. Yeah. We have these this downloadable manual so there’s Chinese, Spanish, English, and there’s and there’s some videos about it so you can see what it looks like. So get resources. I did mention I have some books. I have two how-to books and they’re available at the library, so that can really walk you through it.

[00:10:18] What I found is that people, when they’re putting in the greywater, it’s the first time for many people to have really looked at what’s in their soaps and products. And I tell people to look at Skin Deep, it’s a cosmetic database. Environmental Working Group has this big database of products, and you can put in any product you like, shampoo, conditioner, whatever, and it will tell you what ingredients are in it and rate it for toxicity to humans.

[00:10:50] So greywater is, like, a good time to think about what’s in our products and are they healthy for us, which is not necessarily the same consideration about: Is it healthy for my tree out there? But it’s a good time to just choose healthier products for us and for the environment.

[00:10:55] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): I’ve been talking with Laura Allen of GreywaterAction.org and they have a huge resource for you to start a greywater system. It’s not just for deserts anymore. You can use it up here in Oregon, and this is very important that we start using this in even in Oregon in a rainy place, right? Any last comment on that, how important it is to use right now.

[00:11:15] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): Yeah it’s important to protect our waters and our rivers and greywater can be one great way to do it. And there’s other ways, too: indoor conservation, making our landscapes more waterwise and climate-friendly is another great thing we can do.

[00:11:30] Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): All right, Laura Allen from Greywater Action, thank you very much for your time and your great work.

[00:11:34] Laura Allen (Greywater Action): Thanks for having me.

[00:11:36] Presenter: You can hear Curtis Blankinship and Talk Is Cheap Saturday afternoons at 4, right here on KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio.