Eco-friendly swimming pools are not just a trend anymore. They’ve become a necessity to fight water scarcity and secure a more sustainable future. The Guardian lists down ways people can make their pools greener and better for the environment.
Is there such a thing as an environmentally friendly swimming pool?
I learnt to swim as a young girl in late 1980s London, where the closest you could get to eco-friendly swimming was a big sign at the local leisure centre reading “OOL: notice there is no P in this pool, please keep it that way.”
At the time, I took for granted school swimming lessons, Sunday mornings at Acton swimming baths, and summers spent in ramshackle houses in the French countryside where ‘la piscine’ took centre stage.
Twenty-five years on, our relationship with water is changing. The municipal pools and piscines françaises are still there - joined now by their increasingly affluent holiday resort cousins - but so are stories of widespread drought in California, water-related food insecurity in Djibouti, dams being used as weapons of war in the Middle East, and a UN prediction that by 2030 almost 50% of the global population could be facing water scarcity.
In this light, it’s hard to see swimming pools as anything besides luxury indulgences that intensify the difference between the haves and have nots. So what are the options for sustainable swimming pools, and are they anything more than bluewash?
Natural pools
Natural pools such as those designed by Bristol-based company Clear Water Revival is a chemical-free, relatively low-tech and affordable way to create an eco-friendly outdoor pool. To build the structure, materials such as gravel and clay are used in place of concrete and fibreglass, and aquatic plants replace chlorine and expensive mechanical filtering systems with natural purification that enriches the pool with oxygen, supports beneficial bacteria, and provides a natural habitat for aquatic life.
Spanish architectural firm Urbanarbolismo specialises in the integration of nature into architecture, designing green roofs and vertical gardens as well as natural pools. They incorporate edible plants such as cress, celery and mint into the design of their ‘piscinas naturales’, as well as small fish and native shrimp to eat mosquito larvae and other unwanted insects.
Moss Bros
Like natural pools, moss-filtered pools reduce the need for chemicals such as chlorine and algaecide since they inhibit the growth of microorganisms. This also reduces water consumption as there is less frequent need to ‘backwash’ the pool to clean it, a process that sends water to waste.
The University of Maryland uses moss to filter two on-campus pools, calculating that this system reduces chemical use by 40% and water consumption by 75%, while saving the university $6,663 (£4,064) per year after moss costs.
Turning up the heat
When the time came for Stanhope Open Air Swimming Pool in County Durham to replace its four boilers recently, the pool’s chairman sought the help of renewable energy experts Opus Green to help it come up with a sustainable energy solution. The result is a plan to install two new energy efficient condensing boilers and 38 solar PV panels which are expected to reduce the council’s contribution to the pool’s annual energy costs by approximately 20%.
Although the US has been slow to catch on to the use of solar heating in homes and businesses since low natural gas prices have traditionally undercut the costs of solar water heating, there’s nothing new about using solar heating in swimming pools, in America and beyond.
In the Netherlands, Raalte’s local swimming pool is heated by warmth from wastewater. Every hour, 40,000 litres of purified wastewater is transported from the wastewater treatment plant to the pool, where heat exchangers extract heat from the wastewater, making it possible to heat the swimming pool water to 30C. This new system saves the pool an average of €57,000 on gas and reduces its carbon dioxide emissions by 137,000kg per year.
Skimming the surface
For those just dipping their toes into the world of sustainable swimming pools, there are a whole range of options to get started with. Covering a pool when its not in use can significantly reduce evaporation and helps to retain heat. Likewise using a windbreak has been demonstrated to make a notable difference to both energy retention and reduced evaporation.
Where pool maintenance is concerned, Poolcare Leisure has calculated that fixing small leaks matter: for each drop of water lost per second, 8,000 litres of water are lost per year. Likewise, cleaning a pool regularly prevents the build up of algae that, in a non-natural pool, may otherwise lead to the depolyment of additional chemicals.
Pooling resources
And finally to sharing. While owning a private pool may be a status symbol, there’s a growing sharing movement that sees neighbours lend everything from cars to tools to dogs which could easily embrace the shared swimming pool too.
One woman doing just that is Jessie Hayes from Queensland. She said: “I love my pool, but I’m also aware that water is a precious resource. My husband and I decided to offer swims in our pool to our neighbours through Streetbank. So far we’ve had four families take us up on the offer - in the main, we just leave them to it. It’s great hearing the squeals as the kids dive in.”
Blue World Pools is a one-stop shop for affordable and top-of-the-line swimming pools and maintenance services. Click here to learn how you can transform your backyard into your own eco-friendly resort at a price you can afford.
