After three consecutive dry winters from 2015 to 2017, “Day Zero” – when the taps would run dry – loomed large for the South African city of Cape Town and its surrounds in 2018.
Municipalities introduced a slew of water restrictions and, almost overnight, Capetonians became familiar with the idea of greywater. Many had previously let this untreated water from baths, showers, kitchen sinks, washing machines and the like run down the drain. Now they installed storage tanks or carried around buckets of it to flush their toilets or water their lawns. It was a boom time for domestic greywater technologies.
