The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday sought response from the Centre on a plea seeking directions to stop water wastage caused by using reverse osmosis (RO) water purifiers.
A Bench headed by National Green Tribunal chairperson Swatanter Kumar issued notice to Ministry of Water Resources on an NGO’s plea alleging that for each litre of purified water, filter
dumps almost three to four litres of waste water resulting into wastage of around 80 per cent water.
The Tribunal was hearing a plea filed by NGO Friends seeking directions to the ministry to conduct research work about the “quality” of water produced by reverse osmosis water purifier called RO filter as compared to natural water.
The RO water filter companies are attracting consumers with their smart marketing strategies but the mechanism not only wastes more water but also contaminates water sources, the plea, filed through advocate Sugriva Dubey, said.
The NGO has sought an “effective and centralised” water purification system covering housing clusters in rural and urban areas so that the demand for water purifiers gets reduced automatically.
Sharad Tiwari, general secretary of the NGO, said: “RO filters waste a lot of water, which can only be used for purposes like cleaning and toilet. But again, it is not an easy job to collect the waste water all the time”.
“The RO system was originally invented to create potable water from otherwise unusable sea water and was never meant for filtering ground water. At present, lakhs of people are buying RO system thereby implicating the massive waste of potable water,” the plea said.