Page 7 - October 2015 Green Builder Magazine

New Net Zero Water Web Tool Launched 5

The Brendle Group has created a downloadable toolkit to help buildings,

Aneighborhoods and communities stay within their water footprints.
TEAM OF ORGANIZATIONS, including
sustainable engineering and planning
firm Brendle Group, recently launched
Net Zero Water, a building-scale software
tool that will help owners and managers
rethink water use. As with the concept of net-zero
energy, the goal is to achieve “water neutrality” by only
using water that falls on a site, while at the same time
eliminating water quality impacts from run-off.

To launch the initiative, Brendle Group created a
user-friendly Microsoft Excel-based analysis tool and
companion guidebook called the Net Zero Water Planning
Toolkit. Developed with the help of a national project
team, sponsors and technical advisory group, the toolkit
walks users through the process of understanding their
water footprint and taking action to reduce consumption
and improve water quality. It is anticipated to be used
widely across the public and private sectors.

Subsequent phases will focus on modules for the to test the toolkit and sponsors for developing a toolkit
building portfolio, campus, district/neighborhood and at these larger scales.
community scales. Brendle Group is seeking volunteers Download the tool at www.brendlegroup.com

Entrepreneurs Focus on Water www.greenbuildermedia.com 10.2015

These are just two new ideas FICTIV
seeking to capitalize on heightened CHEN LEVIN VIA YOUTUBE
Circo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVQv9gkNuG0)
Aawareness of water use. Nebia (https://nebia.com/)
S A QUICK WEB SEARCH will reveal, water is
on people’s minds. And ideas for saving water,
large and small, are proliferating. One promising
prototype is Circo, a manual dishwasher intended
to end the handwashing-vs.-machine debate.
Designed for small apartments, it utilizes a hand crank to
circulate soap and water around dishes in the rack above.
Circo uses 0.7 gallons of water per load. Granted, it’s a pretty
small load. Designer Chen Levin has posted a video on
YouTube describing the invention.

Another example that’s further along is the miserly Nebia
showerhead, which only uses 0.75 gallons of water per minute.
(A WaterSense-certified showerhead can use as much as 2.0
gpm.) The showerhead also saves heating energy by delivering
water more efficiently, “atomizing” water into tiny droplets,
which can cover a much greater surface area. The designers
recently concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign,
during which they raised over $3 million. The Nebia can be
preordered for $350 and includes a mountable showerhead
and a hand-held wand.