Clean Sweep

There are certain paradoxes within the current German way of life. I especially mean the attitude toward resource consumption. One of them concerns water. According to Wikipedia, where there is as so often no citation for the source, the average German private consumer in 2005 needed 126 Liters per day. The average American consumed 382. The decline in Germany has been dramatic ever since the raised ecological awareness started to form during the 80s. East Germans quickly adopted that. East German consumption fell from 142 to 93 Liter per day and person in between 1990 and 2004. On top of that, the population shrunk too in East German during that period.

So why isn't it all positive, and where is the paradox? Less consumers, consuming less on top of it, basically have on major drawback. The water stays in the pipes longer. Less floating energy, longer durations, less power to carry away dirt and mud. The water becomes dirtier and even more toxic. The irony of it all is that the suppliers and pipe net maintainers have to fight this of course. So they pump water through the systems every now and then... Lots of it. Last week, for a week, pipes in my quarter have been cleaned. That is what brought the whole issue to my attention again. A newspaper article describes one of those cleansings, just a very small fraction, half an hour of cleansing, a pipe in front of 5 houses. Amount of water needed: 15,000 Liter. A local family of three spends that much in two months. I haven't really made the maths, but it is not all wrong to simply assume that the water Germans learnt to save, by manually stopping the toilet flush (we have efficient flushing systems for that), and lord knows what, is "wasted" on cleansing.

According to readings, pollution levels exceed the limit times 320 in some cases before the  cleaning. One reason why bottled water is the no.1 beverage in Germany. Yes we know that coming from the plant the water is as fresh as a daisy, but... (I know, there are filters..)

And one thing is for sure too. The water needed for the cleansing because people use less surfaces in the companies' calculations, and affects the every rising price for water. Paradox.

More details, in German though, in the Wikipedia entry.

Another of those paradoxes concerns waste. I have no time at hands, but in short: especially in East Germany new modern waste dumps had been built, designed for the consumption levels of 1990 or so. But less people live here now, and an elaborate system of separating waste (paper, plastic, glass get recycled) reduced "common waste" dramatically. Now they are not working on full load, which makes it more expensive to run them. Less waste also makes wastemen less efficient. Waste disposal gets more and more expensive as people produce less waste. And the dumps even import waste from other countries to be able to still use their capacities.