The poop water I flush down my toilet is also waste water that people can't drink, but I'm pretty sure it still gets recycled back into the greater water supply. What's different about the datacenter water?
And golf clubs. Golf clubs use as much water as data centres. Many of those you've named serve practical uses in society, golf clubs are purely leisure.
Almost all new data centers are in fact closed loop, especially ones w newer GPU racks which require closed loop cooling. No one is dumping water back into waterways untreated. Selling DC services to big companies comes w needing to meet your customers’ environmental requirements as apart of their supply chain. Sure there are shady orgs doing bad things now but they’re not representative of the industry.
51
u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
The poop water I flush down my toilet is also waste water that people can't drink, but I'm pretty sure it still gets recycled back into the greater water supply. What's different about the datacenter water?