Agriculture consumes close to 70 percent of water demand, but a significant 10 percent goes to domestic applications, such as maintaining lawns and other landscaping.
Arguably, the best and most sustainable course of action is to let your lawn die and plant indigenous landscapes but, realistically, not everyone is going to do that. The next-best thing, however, would be to find a way to maintain non-native landscaping using as little water as possible.
A company called Blue Marble hopes to help people do just that by leveraging Internet of Things technology to conserve water during domestic irrigation.
The Blue Marble System allows users to manage yard and/or garden irrigation from wherever they happen to be, and consists of five primary parts. The controller connects a garden to internet weather, the Blue Marble App and to Blue Marble devices in the garden. The app is the user’s window into the automated garden from anywhere there’s internet access.
Wireless remote drip/zone irrigation valves, placed inside the garden, work with the controller and app to deliver the optimum amount of water to each plant. Wireless remote lawn sprinkler valves and shrub heads also talk to the controller to deliver water efficiently to each sprinkler head. Garden sensors in the garden wirelessly send moisture, temperature and light readings back to the controller where they are used to schedule optimal watering.
The kicker? The entire system is solar-powered, meaning users never need to change a battery. It will go on delivering water in an intelligent way until the river runs dry — so to speak.
To help bring this product to initial production, the company has launched a Kickstarter campaign. As of this writing, Blue Marble had raised nearly $7,000 toward its goal of $27,200.
Water scarcity may be a long-term issue, but several regions of the United States are feeling its amplified effects from a years-long megadrought. In California, for example, NASA scientists said it will take around 11 trillion gallons of water — about 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir — to recover from the drought. That’s no drop in the bucket.
In fact, NASA drought maps show groundwater levels across the U.S. Southwest are in the lowest two to 10 percent since 1949.
Like it or not, Californians and other denizens of drought-prone areas are going to have to learn to make the most of the little water they have. In California, across-the-board water reductions already have been mandated by Governor Jerry Brown. Digital technologies such as Blue Marble’s smart irrigation offering may help make these cuts as painless as possible.
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Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Aug 10, 2015 2am EDT / 11pm PDT / 7am BST / 8am CEST