The Role of gray water treatment in Afforestation
In this article, we discuss the role of gray water treatment in afforestation, as afforestation of streets, mosques, schools, and clubs is part of the plan launched by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – may God protect him – on February 13, 2019. It aims to plant 7.5 million trees within ten years. And raising the percentage of green areas out of the total developed area of the capital from 1.5% to 9.1% in 2030. The average area of green areas per person is from 1.7 square meters per person to 28 square meters.
The afforestation initiative has started within the Green Riyadh project, and it includes afforestation of the main axes in the capital, with a length of 180 km, to plant 50,000 trees and 100,000 shrubs, including King Salman Road, King Khalid Road, King Fahd Road, Airport Road, Makkah Al-Mukarramah Road, and the Northern Ring Road. , and the eastern ring road. This phase also includes the afforestation of five neighborhoods distributed throughout Riyadh, including Al-Naseem Al-Sharqi, Al-Ghadeer, Ulaysha, Al-Nakhil, and Al-Uraija Al-Wusta.
In addition to providing water for irrigation using treated water, in quantities of up to three thousand cubic meters per day at the present time.
Entities benefiting from the afforestation project
Public universities, schools for boys and girls, in addition to mosques, health and government facilities.
It includes the surrounding public squares in the authorities’ buildings, and the car parks, by making use of the treated wastewater network (renewable gray water) and the ablution water in the mosques and mosques to direct it to the afforestation of the areas surrounding the mosque and the car parks.
Advantages of gray water resulting from ablution washbasins in mosques
- It is considered purer than other gray water in homes and others
- Can be reused in parcel and planter boxes
- Processing is economically inexpensive
- It constitutes a significant resource and reduces the total demand for water
Why choose gray water?
- It constitutes 55 to 74% of the water used in buildings
- It contains a low percentage of organic matter and nitrogen pollution, as well as germs and microbes
- Lower treatment costs compared to wastewater
- Human acceptance to reuse that water
- Recycling and reusing them is harmless to the environment and health if the specified conditions and specifications are applied
Requirements for Building a gray water treatment plant
Gray water recycling will not entail random retrofits in all buildings in the country or capture all the gray water that leaves the building, as these methods are not economically feasible.
However, gray water should only be reused when there is a large resource and only low engineering costs are required such as large or new public buildings. The production of gray water as a resource costs the state and the end user almost nothing.
Also, there are no high treatment costs hypothetically if the gray water from large public buildings is used for landscaping of the surrounding areas.
The use of greywater in landscaping requires only choosing the right plant and dealing with an experienced company to determine your needs in addition to simple fortnightly maintenance to clean the filter, but this greywater system will eliminate the current need for manual watering with a hose and the labor costs of the branch gardener.
Savings that result from recycling gray water
Reducing the increased demand for desalinated water is one of the most direct ways in which greywater recycling generates savings. For example, gray water from ablutions can be reused to irrigate trees around mosques, replacing the desalinated water currently used for this purpose.
Treated gray water can be used as an alternative to desalinated water for landscaping, car washing, and toilet flushing.
Gray water recycling also results in savings by reducing the amount of wastewater that undergoes treatment.
