Life Without Water

dune

Which is more valuable: diamonds or water? It’s clear to me. Water is the perfect product. It is endlessly useful, cheap, simple, ubiquitous, and beautiful. Water is essential to all forms of life and is used in every industry, not to mention its calming presence. As our species continues to shape the planet I find it increasingly important that we take pains to conserve the purity of this critical chemical. This is why, when my friend George McGraw of digdeepwater.org invited me to take the 4 Liter challenge I jumped at the chance.

The rules are simple. Do not use more than 4 liters of water per day. I also decided to track ‘virtual’ water usage. That is, be mindful of the water used to produce a good that is used, in addition to water used directly. Given that a single toilet flush takes over 6L of water, and the cotton in a pair of jeans takes about 7000L to grow, some changes to my life were clearly in order.

Hygiene

I awake the morning of the challenge and throw off my cotton sheets with disgust. From this moment on every drop counts. I brush my teeth without water and put on dry deodorant. Relieving myself in the toilet is not an option. For a moment I consider following Clinton’s advice: “if it’s yellow let it mellow”, but decide to go full Bukowski instead: “sometimes you just have to piss in the sink”. Could we engineer more efficient kidneys?

For number two I had to plan in advance. Inadequate sanitation is an enormous quality of life problem globally. The most popular toilet in the world is no toilet at all as 4 in 10 people in the world defecate in the open. Flush toilets use enormous quantities of water so I needed a way to make it unnecessary.

Feces are almost entirely deceased gut bacteria and water. I massacred my gut bacteria the day before by consuming a DIY Soylent version with no fiber and taking 500mg of Rifaximin, an antibiotic with poor bioavailability, meaning it stays in your gut and kills bacteria. Soylent’s microbiome consultant advised that this is a terrible idea so I do not recommend it. However, it worked. Throughout the challenge I did not defecate.

In lieu of showering I sprayed myself with AOBiome’s custom skin bacteria blend. Body odor is caused by the emissions of proliferating skin bacteria, as unique as a fingerprint. The Nitrosomonas eutropha taking over my skin now metabolizes ammonia into odorless nitrite and nitric oxide. Success! I wish I had a strain that excreted lipases, as my hair was still greasy.

Direct water usage: 0L

Virtual water usage: 0L

Clothing

My standard outfit is mostly cotton, which takes 20,000L of water per kg so I had to improvise. I did some research and settled on Nomex, a meta-aramid invented by DuPont in the 1960’s. Nomex is a fantastic material used in applications as diverse as circuit boards, loudspeakers, and clothing. Made via condensation from m-phenylenediamine and isophthaloyl chloride, its production uses no water. I found a Nomex flight suit on Alibaba and added a “Soylent” patch. I love it. It’s cheap, simple, comfortable, and fireproof, just in case. I also did no laundry of course, which would have used 170L.

nomex

Direct water usage: 0L

Virtual water usage: 0L

Food

There are some species that never drink water. They obtain it from the food they eat, or synthesize it biochemically. Humans only synthesize about 10% of their water needs which means I’ll need to drink some. I also need food, the production and distribution of which is the single largest burden on the water system by a mile. Agriculture constitutes 80-90% of the water used in the United States. A mere kg of red meat takes 15,415L of water to produce. I was a little crestfallen to learn that a single cheeseburger can outweigh using a high efficiency toilet for a year.[1][2]

To avoid this issue I consumed nothing but Soylent throughout the challenge. Soylent uses no meat or dairy and only 1.6L of water. To avoid dishes and their subsequent water usage I poured my Soylent one meal at a time in to a polystyrene cup, which takes less than 1L of water to make.[3] Soylent does not contain enough water in itself so I begrudgingly drank an additional 400ml of tap water.

If there’s anything as amazing as water it’s petroleum. My clothing and dishes take less water to make than they do to clean.

Dying to know the virtual water footprint of Soylent, we contracted an analyst at a Chicago think tank to run a study on the product. The complicated formula and numerous sources, as well as proprietary manufacturing and process information made this difficult and a bit imprecise. However, there was enough published data to end up with a conservative estimate. Rice protein was the biggest issue, given that rice is relatively water intensive to grow and is only about 10% protein by mass. Our rice processor claims they have a 0 carbon footprint and reclaim much of the water used but I couldn’t get many specifics. Not accounting for this we still ended up at 2030L per day of Soylent, which is about 50% of the virtual water footprint of the standard american diet (SAD), 4000L. Not bad. I bet we could lower it though.

Complete analysis here (criticism encouraged): https://s3.amazonaws.com/robrhinehart.com/soylent-water-footprint.xlsx

Final tally:

Direct water usage: 2L

Virtual water usage: 2031L

US Average:

Direct water usage: 1135L[4]

Virtual water usage: 7570L[5]

Conclusion

Water is the most popular beverage in the world, and still 20% of us are living without enough even to drink[6]. Our foods, our bodies, and our planet are mostly water, and yet, we are spoiling and wasting what the cosmos has made[7] at an unsustainable rate. I don’t expect anyone to live as I did during the challenge. Even I missed coffee and a hot shower. However, I do think it is important to be mindful of the network effects of one’s lifestyle. With water, as with most things, it is better to do more with less.

References

[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use.aspx

[2] http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Animal-products

[3] http://plasticfoodservicefacts.com/Life-Cycle-Inventory-Foodservice-Products

[4] http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/water_use_today.html

[5] http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/change-the-course/water-footprint-calculator/

[6] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4787758.stm

[7] http://www.nature.com/news/earth-has-water-older-than-the-sun-1.16011

Footnote

It is possible that a substantial amount of earth’s water was synthesized by purple sulfur bacteria in the photosynthetic reaction

\mathrm{ CO_2 + 2\ H_2S \rightarrow CH_2O + H_2O + 2\ S }

This means we could manufacture water out of sunlight, CO2 and flatulence. What if we scaled this up?

  • deggs

    Polystyrene??

  • CJ Lawrence

    Think you need to look at http://www.aquasciences.com/ and other solutions using the same technology

  • Jon Hendry

    Hey, asshole, stop fucking around with antibiotics. We have problems enough with antibiotic resistance without cavalier idiocy like this.

    • janeylicious

      +1 about antibiotic resistance.

      Also, this challenge is a nightmare for your body in general, please don’t do this. My dad was recently in the hospital for a severe C. diff infection following a course of antibiotics to treat a kidney infection, and that was with a short course and probiotics. Not drinking enough water (2 liters is a bit low) plus fucking around with antibiotics is not. a. joke. on so many levels. You want to deal with kidney injuries and flirt with death, be my guest. It didn’t take much for my dad’s mild case of C. diff to turn into a nightmare that fucked with his entire body at the same time.

      I’d rather be donating to charity:water and considering the 4L challenge _without including drinking water_. Still quite a challenge.

    • thmoonbus

      Heavy antibiotics use has also been linked to Inflammatory Bowel Disorders like ulcerative colitis and chrons disease (which can be crippling and even fatal) most likely BECAUSE they mess with your gut micro-biome. This guy is a loon.

  • Joe

    Support Autism awareness!

  • SocraticGadfly

    Dude, you’re headed straight for the land of kidney stones. Have a spare one of my old ones, while you’re at it.

    • Reality

      He’ll be lucky if pissing rocks is the only negative consequence of this.

  • Reality

    Holy shit. The internal microbial biome is incredibly important to both digestion and health. You are a goddamn idiot and will likely suffer from significant side-effects all in the pursuit of what amounts to a Stupid Human Trick.

    The fact that the Rifaximin is going to pass through your body and into the environment and fuck things up downstream is just icing on the shit-cake.

    (Also, I’m pretty sure that any sane insurer would drop your health coverage in a hearbeat if they were to discover that you’re literally performing DIY medical experiments on yourself with known harmful consequences.)

    • Reality

      Oh, and fecal matter comprises much more than just water and bacteria. Your system needs to get rid of waste products, dead cells, etc. We are not self-contained systems with immortal cells.

  • Reality

    Did you even bother to look into what would be involved with large-scale cultivation of purple bacteria, or did you just read a Wikipedia article and look at the reaction formula and call it a day? Because there are plenty of reasons why we can’t just “scale [it] up”. (For example, all of that product sulfide? What are you going to do when it oxidizes into sulfuric acid?)

  • Exhaustive Destruction

    Don’t you need to use a lot of water anyway to make those chemicals? I imagine the grunt work that goes into setting up shit for “m-phenylenediamine” and “isophthaloyl chloride” might be less than what’s required to grow cotton but is still substantial. Also the water for the slave labor that goes into everything else you’re using, you dipshit techie scum.

  • shamama

    You forgot to mention that you did this to prove to anyone who had any doubts that you’re not literally full of shit, right?

    I’m sure there was a lot of water used in the production of the Soylent patch you added to your nerd-jumpsuit, but I guess you can overlook that since this whole, massive waste of time & (investor) resources was just a feeble attempt to use “science” under the guise of a publicity stunt.

    The doctor who prescribed you antibiotics should have this license revoked.

  • amyhoy

    Packaging and shipping a high-tech jumpsuit around the globe (thanks Alibaba!) definitely doesn’t take any indirect water, not by the people who run the operations, or the cardboard, or production of the parts in the plane… Globalism is water-free, dontchaknow!

  • jamiebronson

    Why didn’t you use a composting toilet instead of killing the essential bacteria in your intestines?

  • Pirata do Cabide

    If you really cared about conserving water from flushing that much you would have just used a composting toilet. Admit it, you just needed and angle to promote soylent.

  • Blake Thompson

    I’m always surprised by the tone of the comments on here. That someone as intelligent, thoughtful, and adventurous as yourself gets treated so poorly is a shame. It’s a shame, not just because it might be discouraging to you, but also because it might be discouraging to others similar to you. Maybe you’ve made some mistakes. That’s inevitable. What’s inspiring is that you’re not giving in to cynicism, that you have the courage to fail, and that throughout all this you rarely (if ever) give into the temptation to reflect the negativity that’s presented to you. You also seem to have a really keen sense of what science is all about. That is, that it’s not about being right – it’s about improving our lives – and that takes imagination, selfless dedication, learning to live with and be open about various kinds of uncertainty, and the courage to fail miserably if need be.

    For better or worse, whether you like it or not, you’re an inspiration to me and others like myself.

    Blake Thompson
    Graduate Student
    Seattle University
    Department of Psychology
    ____________________________
    bbthomp@vt.edu
    blake-thompson.com

    • Guest

      This guy took antibiotics to kill off his intestinal fauna in order to stop defecating. I think what he’s doing goes well beyond “scientific exploration” at this point.

    • Reality

      As a graduate student in the department of psychology, you are well versed on the consequences of killing off one’s internal microbiome, yup.

  • btodder

    And here I thought consuming petroleum was just as bad as consuming water. Rob, just how much Petrochemical is used in the manufacture of your Soylent?

  • Dias

    Personally, I believe the whole microbiome thing is just a shame invented to sell probiotics & yogurt. If I could completely wipe-out my gut-flora I would do it in a heartbeat. Any recommendations other than Rifaximin?

  • Jonathan Smith

    Hey Rob,

    I don’t want to say “don’t listen to these people,” as certainly some critics will make valid points, but the vitriol that comes with those points is just amazing. Yeah, turning your body into a lab is a supremely risky endeavor, but it doesn’t warrant verbal abuse. I also have more than a few doubts that you’re doing this because you want to promote what you make. Seems more like you want to promote sustainability, no? Isn’t that a substantial part of the idea behind Soylent, for you and the rest of the developers?

    Obvoiusly there’s motivation behind undertaking a huge R&D effort aimed at making your product as sustainable as humanly possible, so that motivation almost certainly extends beyond money and reaches into Rob’s personal life. I mean, I’m an anticapitalist myself and even I don’t think everything businesspeople do is because of what they sell. “Then why did corporate shill man add a Soylent patch???” Because he helped start the company and he’s proud of it and he works there. Sheesh, chill out, people.

  • kaceylu

    I found the entire Software Tailor team to very helpful and knowledgeable.

    You help me understand the differences between the other systems on the

    market and the software development HK

  • LoLno

    I trust soylent just a little less now…

    yeah I must have trusted my instincts when I heard there is a powdered alternative for food that leaves no effects on your kidneys, digestive system etc… made by a guy who doesn’t enjoy his kidneys, digestive system, skin, etc…

    • Soccerfan831

      All of you seem to miss the part where he points out he did it just for the challenge and he does not suggest the action he took.

  • http://v3p.tv/ zeek

    This blog represents a trend of hemi-pseudoscientific pop culture. Given a little knowledge we have factually derived from the sciences, nutritionists and ecologists make a sweeping array of claims many if which have never been proven ‘true’ and , by association with valid claims, are able to draw Up a cultural product; something to buy, a lifestyle to buy into, a set of person all judgments to judge others by, that are the adopted by science and tech minded folks .

    Much of what passes for ‘culuture’ of global warming and in the pop consciousness, passes into this pattern. The mix of panic and self righteousness make the product so attractive to many folks that the hemi- pseudoscientic culture even resembles religion as practiced in some group cases.

    I personally like the meal replacement called soylent. But much of the associated nutritional claims are of course bogus. It is however a legit meal replacement and from my own experience tastes one hell of a lot better than the disgusting drinks found in a corporate healthcare setting such as ‘ensure’ and rite -aid style meal replacements sold in hospitals by the billions of dollars per year.