[Taylorious]

I suppose it depends on where you live. If you live in Arizona it might end up being an issue due to the energy cost of processing the water for reuse. However, if you live in Chicago you aren't going to have a shortage of water anytime soon.

I don't really get these water shortage scares people talk about. I can see how it is an issue in remote/poor areas around the world, but a country like the US has nothing to worry about. If fresh water reserves get low we can always desalinate seawater. There are engineering challenges and energy costs to do that, but both are solvable issues. No one is going to die from thirst.

[kissickas]

I think a large part of the problem is that it's a "tragedy of the commons" situation. We won't see a huge investment in better recycling and desalinization until it's absolutely required, which would mean that we've already destroyed some aquifers permanently, in some places causing entire aquifers to become unrecoverable [0].

No one is going to die from thirst? Maybe. But a lot of the water loss is in the food-producing middle of the country. People are already starving in the US, and increased food prices will only exacerbate the situation. [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer#Subsidence (sections subsidence, saltwater intrusion, and salination)

[1] https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

[rainedin]

I guess if you have your liquid waste contained within closed loop then you can get around drought issues.

Making black water potable I'd guess uses more energy and resources than recycling grey. I bet a victorian sewage system couldn't work without gallons of water either. An alternative might be to defacate in our gardens if we have them.

Piss by itself isn't that harmful, you can use it on the garden. I piss frequently into a watering can.