Taiwan, Microchips, and Water

As many of us know, one of the reasons several items, from cars and cell phones to toasters, are in short supply right now is because there is a worldwide microchip shortage. Yes, many of today’s toasters use microchips, as do scores of other household appliances. Most of these microchips come from Taiwan.

However, what many of us do not know is that one of the key reasons for this worldwide chip shortage is water, or shall we say, lack thereof. A severe drought, the worst in 50 years, has been gripping Taiwan for the past several months.

According to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), 156,000 tons of water are needed per day to operate their microchip manufacturing plant. That’s enough water to fill roughly 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day.

TSMC is the largest chip manufacturer in the world. The company supplies chips to just about every company, large and small, globally. So, if production has slowed down, in this case, due to a shortage of water, this means the impact is likely being felt just about everywhere. And don’t expect this to get any better anytime soon. Typically, Taiwan is considered one of the wettest countries in the world. So, in the past, it had the necessary enormous amounts of water to manufacture microchips.

But a new study, published June 24, 2021, in Physics.org. from “The Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,” suggests persistent air pollution problems going back more than 13 years is reducing the amount of rainfall in the country. The study analyzed data from 2005 to 2017 and suggests that aerosol concentrations have been building up in the atmosphere around Taiwan.

These concentrations have directly reduced the amount of rainfall in the country. “These drought conditions are impacting people’s daily lives and industrial production,” said Qilong Min, a research associate at UAlbany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC) and the study coauthor.

“Scientists are trying to understand the linkage of the drought and other environmental factors. We’re looking closely at all those environmental factors—including aerosols in the atmosphere. Our analysis is showing a clear linkage that when air pollution is higher, it results in a decrease in the characteristics of rain droplets and frequency of drizzle events.”

Some observers suggest that if Taiwan no longer has the necessary water to manufacture microchips, why not just build new plants in new countries?

Much easier said than done.

First, new plants would need to be built in countries that have vast amounts of water, just as Taiwan traditionally has been blessed with. Few countries have that. Further, these are very costly manufacturing facilities. To replace them would cost billions of dollars, which likely would need to be paid by governments.

Another thing to consider, the people working in these plants are highly skilled. Most have been trained specifically to work in this manufacturing facility doing this type of work. Replacing these people in another, possibly remote area of the world, would likely prove difficult.

So what options do we have?

The first is one we have not addressed. That is that this summer is, by all accounts, a true game changer when it comes to water and drought. It’s all around us, year after year, from California to Taiwan. People are beginning to realize this is long-term and to recognize the connection between climate change and its impact on people’s lives, manufacturing, and worldwide economies.

The second is more obvious. Plants in Taiwan and similar plants worldwide need to develop manufacturing technologies that do not require as much water to manufacture microchips. Already recycling and filtering systems are being introduced. However, TSMC and other companies likely should have been working much harder on developing new water-reducing technologies long before it became a crisis.

Finally, reducing water consumption and using water much more responsibly, efficiently, and sustainably must now be on everyone’s mind. Remember, this summer, the summer of 2021, is a game changer for dry weather and drought. We need to make changes now to protect our futures.

More Ways to Reduce Water Consumption

This Drought Looks Like
a Real Gamechanger

The western part of the United States is experiencing one of the worst droughts in years. And this one looks like a real gamechanger. More people now realize this is part of a permanent trend.

Fortunately, many western states have learned from past droughts and now manage water much better than a decade ago. Further, new technologies have been introduced that help us use water more efficiently.

However, the future calls for more stringent steps to reduce consumption, especially in commercial facilities. 

"Because a great deal of the water used in commercial facilities is used for landscaping," says Klaus Reichardt, CEO, and Founder of Waterless CO., Inc., "that's the first place to start."  

Among his recommendation:

• Catalog all vegetation growing around the building and determine which plants/vegetation can be replaced with native plants that use less water.

• Analyze the land layout. Higher areas likely need more water than lower areas due to water runoff.

• Switch to recycled water. Treated wastewater can be used at such places as golf courses and cemeteries. "These locations use huge amounts of water for irrigation. Converting them to recycled water reduces water consumption dramatically."

• Irrigate only at night.

• Install water sensors to determine if irrigation is even needed.

• Install several water meters to monitor how much water is being used throughout the property.

"However, if a facility is not landscaped, then [we need to] focus on restrooms," says Reichardt. "This is where the most water is consumed in these facilities."

Among the steps he suggests building owners and managers take are the following:

• Install aerators in all faucets.

• Look for and fix leaks.

• Install new urinals that consume less water per flush or transfer to waterless urinals that use no water at all. They are also less costly to install and maintain.

"As for toilets, the keyword today is 'velocity,'" says Reichardt. "Newer toilets use compressed air – velocity - to flush waste. This technology eliminates the need for second flushes and reduces water consumption dramatically."

Public Restrooms: How to Design For All

Public restrooms pose a distinct challenge that embodies the essential goal of design: to create functional spaces in institutional and commercial facilities without sacrificing aesthetic quality. COVID-19 has accelerated the advancement of public restroom design across market sectors.

By shifting to single-user, gender-neutral restrooms, managers can make restrooms more personal and inclusive and less institutionalized.

Public expectations for sanitization in facilities are at an all-time high, and customers are increasingly looking for a positive restroom experience. Functional components of hygiene, cleanability, and conservation of resources remain primary concerns, tempered by the innate need to be surrounded by aesthetically pleasing design.

Touchless and sustainable

The trend of touchless technology will continue to be the primary arbiter of change. Sensor-activated faucets came into prominence in the early 1980s and have proven to be one of the most important and lasting innovations in restroom design. Fixtures continued to improve over the decades, in terms of reliability, cost and efficiency. 

The newest touchless fixture solutions combine faucet, dryer, and soap dispensers with trough-style sinks. Safety and appearance retention are the primary goals of these combination style units. Because hand washing and drying occur in the same space, water spills on the floor are limited, mitigating slip-and-fall conditions. Deeper sinks also help minimize splash. 

Conservation also is a major consideration in the design of public restrooms. For example, hand dryers are not only convenient but reduce paper towel waste. An increased focus on resource conservation, coupled with the popularity of touchless combination units, led to the development of waterless urinals in the 1990s. In light of the pandemic, as more customers and guests are keen on cleanliness, the use of waterless urinals will expand.

While waterless urinals are common in high throughput public facilities, such as stadiums and highway rest stops, waterless toilets have not yet become mainstream. These devices greatly reduce the spread of bacteria because users do not need to touch the device due to the lack of a flushing requirement.

Currently an outlier, the waterless or composting toilet was featured prominently by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in the Netflix movie, “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.” The foundation sponsored a competition that addressed the need for sanitary waste disposal in developing countries.

While these systems often target residential use in rural areas, the same technology could be applied to higher capacity public restrooms in the future. The increasing price of water will drive acceptance of these new approaches. As water continues to be a scarce resource in many regions and water futures are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the transition to waterless technology for commercial use seems highly probable over the next 10 years.

Touchless fixtures help create a cleaner restroom by managing stock and having fewer touchpoints to disinfect. Similarly, waterless urinals help reduce odor complaints.

Maintenance labor costs remain a primary concern for building owners and managers because demands for wage increases and wage parity become increasingly prominent in today’s current socio-political environment. As a result, the need for easily cleanable fixtures and materials will continue to grow. 

To Read more from the original article by Rick Marencic, on Facilitiesnet.com, click here.

Have a Happy, Healthy and Safe July 4th!

We at Waterless want to wish each and every one of you, our clients,
and our future clients a happy, healthy, and safe July 4th weekend.

Let’s acknowledge all the people that fought so hard to keep our country
safe and strong – and are still doing so.

We have much to be grateful for, including living in the USA.

This country symbolizes freedom, happiness, and prosperity for people all over the world.

Enjoy your holiday and please, if you are out in a park, at the ocean, or climbing a mountain,
remember, we must all use water responsibly. 

A Photo Essay - California faces another drought as lake beds turn to dust

Water shortages and dry conditions are already affecting the state as the governor has declared an emergency in 41 of 58 counties

Verdant hillsides losing their hue, receding reservoirs with bathtub rings of newly exposed earth, crops withering in the fields.

These are the visions of California’s parched landscape as the state braces for another potentially devastating drought. Water shortages and exceptionally dry conditions are already beginning to hit home.

To read and see more photos, click here to take you to the original article on Guardian.com

How Waterless Urinals are Changing Schools in India

For some visitors to this site, the following may be a bit difficult to read. However, we should keep in mind that the conditions described here are quite common around the world.

In many parts of India, school restrooms do not have urinals. Instead, the restrooms typically have a blank wall. Boys are expected to urinate against the wall. 

Further, they are expected to then fetch a bucket of water and toss it against the wall. The problem is that all too often, there is no bucket, and even if there is, the water source may not be working.

Complicating issues, many schools in India do not have custodial workers and, if they do, cleaning is very infrequent. The result: boys’ restrooms throughout many parts of the country are dirty, smelly, and very unsanitary.

This situation is causing another problem. Sanitation is always a big concern in India, and the recent COVID outbreak has made it even worse. Teachers and parents believe the unsanitary restrooms are causing boys to grow up with little concern about proper hygiene and cleanliness. This may lead to even more public health problems in the future.

Until recently, addressing this challenge has proven difficult and very costly. To install traditional, water-using urinals in schools throughout India would cost millions of dollars and prove to be a major undertaking. Furthermore, water is not always available when needed. Even in the best conditions, water delivery can be intermittent, but during droughts, water delivery may be turned off for hours at a time. If water-using urinals were installed, they would likely make the restrooms even more smelly and unhealthy as waste accumulates in them.

However, a solution has materialized, to help promote proper hygiene, keep boys’ restrooms cleaner and healthier, and change behaviors so that boys value sanitation—the savior: waterless urinals.

Waterless urinals are being installed in schools throughout the country.   Because they are waterless, no water must be delivered to the urinal, eliminating that need and that cost. As the urinals are used, urine is drained into sewer pipes that are already hooked up to the schools.

Students are also participating in the installation of waterless urinals in their schools. This helps reduce the costs of installation, and their involvement also gives the boys a sense of ownership, not only for the urinals but the entire restroom.

Teachers and parents believe this is also helping to change behaviors. Boys are more focused on health and protecting health. With all these advantages, some are now wondering why no one thought of installing waterless urinals earlier.

Putting Waterless Urinals to the Water Savings Test

Putting Waterless Urinals to the Water Savings Test

Grappling with constant droughts, dry conditions, and a growing student population, in 2008, the Arizona School Facilities Board decided it was time to consider switching out the old water-using urinals in their schools and installing no-water or waterless urinals.  However, they had to make sure this switch would save them enough water to be warranted.

Further, they had to take their findings up the ladder to the Arizona State Legislator.  The legislators would want to know not only if this would help the schools reduce water consumption, but if it was worth the money.

To analyze the situation, the Arizona School Facilities Board created a spreadsheet. Six different schools in the state were selected.  These were of varying sizes and student populations.  Below is a replica of their spreadsheet:

Notes on the analysis:

• The number of students in each school and the number of males students in each school are based on how many students the schools are designed to accommodate. The actual numbers may be higher or lower.

• The number of flushes per day are estimates.

• Based on this analysis, these six schools would save 833,810 gallons of water annually.

• Based on water charges at the time, it was further estimated that the pay-back period, otherwise known as the return on the investment, would be about two years.

• Switching to waterless urinals, according to the analysis, would save these schools approximately $209,628 per year based on water charges at that the time.

As a result of this analysis, the Arizona School Facilities Board has become a very vocal proponent of installing waterless urinals. Additionally, because of this study, the state has since passed laws requiring almost all new and renovated schools in the state install waterless urinals. Further, they have extended this policy to almost all public buildings throughout the state of Arizona.

By 2023, Lake Mead could be in a Tier 2 shortage.

Lake Mead’s water levels are heading the wrong way and going there alarmingly fast.

If the forecast holds, it’s now likely that we will fall into a more severe Tier 2 shortage by 2023, spreading painful cuts to even more water users in Arizona.

That nugget of bad news comes from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month study, which is updated each month to predict reservoir conditions for the next two years. In April, the projection was that Lake Mead – the reservoir that provides nearly 40% of Arizona’s water – would most certainly be in a Tier 1 shortage in 2022 but would miss the Tier 2 cutoff for 2023 by three-tenths of a foot.

Now, in May, the most likely projection is that Lake Mead will end 2022 at 1,048.83 feet of elevation – more than a foot past the trigger to put us in Tier 2.

To read more on azcentral.com, click here.

Restaurants Go Touchless

A February survey in a leading trade magazine for the restaurant industry reports that most of their readers plan to update their establishments to be more touchless. Furthermore, of those responding, more than a quarter report they plan to install new fixtures in their restrooms, selecting only those fixtures that operate without touching.

This, of course, is all the result of COVID.  As the restaurant industry around the country begins to open its doors, owners and managers want their patrons to know they are doing everything possible to protect their health and the health of their staff.

As to the survey, here is more of what was uncovered:

·      Nearly one-third say they will be introducing touchless ordering and payment systems.

·      Menus are also going touchless, so bring your phone. More than 20 percent say QR codes will replace menus this year or very shortly. 

·      Touchless doors and entryways are also being introduced by more than twenty percent of those surveyed.

This is just the beginning. We can expect even more changes in the future as this country begins to pull out of the pandemic.  For instance, one Florida restaurant has hired "Peanut" to wait tables. Peanut is a restaurant robot.  He welcomes patrons with menus, takes food orders, and delivers food.

RobotsDynamic.com

The restaurant owner said he decided to hire Peanut because so many of his pre-pandemic staff have left his area of the country, are no longer interested in being waiters, or because patrons prefer not having close contact with a waiter. Furthermore, many waiters are concerned about serving patrons in a post-COVID era.

"Whatever the reason, Peanut is taking their place, and most of our patrons seem to be happy with him," says the restaurant owner. "He's even getting tips."

Other restaurants, including national chains like Chick-fil-A, are also hiring robotic waiters that can handle many of the tasks of restaurant help.   According to one manager, who asked to remain anonymous, "they [the robots] can't get fevers and don't cough on food. They are relentlessly cheerful, never pushy, and the kitchen staff says they are easy to work with."

We also mentioned earlier that many restaurants around the country are rethinking their restrooms.  Many are replacing traditional fixtures with auto-sensors that release water or flush toilets when needed to eliminate touching.  These sensor-operated units have been replacing manual devices for several years; however, due to COVID, the pace of installing these devices has undeniably increased.

With urinals, however, it is another matter. Many bars and restaurants report that when manual flush mechanisms are installed on urinals, they tend to get vandalized.  The same is true when sensor-controlled flush urinals are installed.

As a result, many restaurant managers and owners are taking a much closer look at waterless urinals.

There are no flush handles on waterless urinals.  Further, there is no need to "touch" a waterless urinal.  In fact, back in the early days when waterless urinals were first installed, signs often were placed above the urinals indicating all you need to do is "use the urinal and then walk away."

But there is another reason waterless urinals are garnering closer interest, which is all about health.  We know that traces of COVID can be found in urine.  If someone is carrying the disease and uses a flush urinal, there is a chance that splatter from the urinal - or the flush of the urinal - will release these pathogens into the air, spreading the disease.

There is less chance of this happening with waterless urinals, and, because they do not have flush handles, they do not need to be touched. With these benefits in mind, restaurant owners are finding waterless urinals to be a much healthier fixture option.

Stopping the Water Scarcity Cycle

Sometimes, when we see people living in more impoverished, more desperate areas of the world, we ask ourselves, “why can’t these people improve their lives?

Further, we often find that children living in some problematic parts of the world stop going to school at a young age. From here, a cycle begins that repeats itself over and over again: children receive minimal formal education, perpetuating a life of poverty.

According to Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist best known for creating “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” there is a particularly good reason for this. In fact, it is easy to understand why this cycle keeps repeating and a lot of it comes down to water, or should we say, the lack of water.

According to Maslow:

Without secure access to clean water, [people] find it harder to focus on things beyond the most basic elements needed for survival. When you are thirsty or hungry, you will become distracted by these deficiencies and will have to satisfy those needs to be productive elsewhere. You can ignore these needs for a while, but you cannot go long without proper hydration.

He also says that many people around the world are faced with challenges that those in more affluent, and more water-rich areas of the world, can’t even fathom.

“Many people [in these poorer areas of the world] are stuck in a fight for survival. The things we require to survive are requirements for a reason. We need certain things like food and water to provide our body with nutrients and keep it functioning properly.”

When we consider what Maslow is saying, it is easier for us to understand why the cycle mentioned earlier continues along with the predicament these people are trying to survive in. But what we may not understand is just how big that predicament is.

Possibly these stats can give us an idea:

• While the numbers can vary depending on sources, they are still bad no matter what the source. Most report that about 1.1 billion people in the world lack regular access to water.

• Nearly three billion people live in areas of the world where water is scarce at least one or more months per year.

• About half the schools worldwide do not have proper access to clean water and sanitation facilities.

• Collectively, around the world, children spend 200 million hours every single day collecting water.

Further, some experts now believe that at the rate we are contaminating freshwater sources, we are looking at a very real chance that by 2025—that’s three years from now—as much as two-thirds of the world’s people will need to grapple with some type of water scarcity, temporarily or permanently. This means that very likely more children may find themselves in this cycle of little education and more poverty.

If there was ever a reason for improving water efficiency and water conservation, it is for this, the children of the world. It’s one reason that Waterless Co., Inc., supports organizations that are trying to improve water-related conditions for the world’s children as well as develop new technologies that help us minimize, if not eliminate, the use of water, helping to address this water scarcity challenge.