Blog #2: Water: Grey Water Recycling; The Kraft Group’s utilization of Grey Water at Gillette Field

                Grey water recycling is the future of water conservation. It is a way to use water to its full potential before disposing of it. According to an article titled Membrane bio-reactors for decentralized wastewater treatment and reuse, “Grey water is the effluent from bath tubs, showers, washbasins, dishwashers and laundry machines” [2]. This grey water can be reused, will little effort, as service water. In other words, grey water can be made into a non-drinking water alternative as service water. Service water can be used for toilet flushing, irrigation, and even for cleaning purposes. Service water is clean enough for these uses, but not clean enough to drink, but who needs fully clean drinking water for these services? It is a way to get more out of the water we use. This is the focus of The Kraft Group in their idea for recycling grey water at Gillette Field.

                I am a football fan. When I read about Gillette Field, home of the New England Patriots, establishing a standard in grey water recycling I was excited. I was also curious and began to ask myself some questions concerning this action. What motivated a company to use this practice in their stadium? What are impacts of such a move? These two questions are important to understanding why a company does something like this and how we can communicate that benefit to other companies.

MOTIVATION

On The Kraft Group’s website, the ones responsible for Gillette Field, they state “…we realized that good business and sustainability can and should go hand-in-hand… we focus our efforts on practicing principles of sustainability in all of our businesses on a day-to-day basis” [1]. In this statement, the motivation seems to be a “realization”. I am not sure what that means, but it may be a personal commitment from their leadership. A personal commitment from leadership may seem like a small motivating factor, but on their website they include green-efforts across all aspects of their business demonstrating that this is a bigger motivating factor than it sound. They also mention good business and sustainability should go hand in hand. A statement like this is targeted at the business side of their motivation. Their leaders understand that sustainability is not about being a “nice” company, but it is about doing “good” business. That means using resources to the best of their capabilities and making profitable investments in its utilization.

IMPACTS

According to the stadium website, the stadium has a seating capacity of 68,756. Events are held in the stadium year round [3]. There are also 500 points of sale and can be assumed that a huge portion of those points use service water. According to a case study, “Given the commercial nature of the properties served, the water reuse system supplies approximately 75% of the total water used…” [4]. The study also goes into defining the water flow and the 1 million gallon equalization tank to buffer overflow for weekly stadium events. These numbers are staggering. This is just one stadium and the amount of water it is saving is tremendous. The impacts of saving this much water is that it does not drain too much water from surrounding regions.

                The Kraft Group’s commitment to demonstrating how sustainability and good business go hand in hand is ground breaking. Hopefully this commitment will inspire other stadiums to follow in their footsteps. With more stadiums recycling grey water, water conservation will become more of a reality.

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[1] http://www.thekraftgroup.com/environment/

[2] S. Meuler, S. Paris and T. Hackne 2008. Membrane bio-reactors for decentralized wastewater treatment and reuse [Abstract]. Water Science and Technology. 285-294.

[3] http://www.gillettestadium.com/stadium_information/

[4]http://www.werf.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=13304