New Florence. New Renaissance.: Water

When it sits on your bathroom counter, a new device called Droppler measures how much water you're using and gives real-time feedback. But once you've trained yourself to take shorter showers—and you're no longer using the gadget—you can turn it into a drone or a video camera.

Founders at Nascent, the startup making Droppler, think that this could be the future of electronics: instead of tossing out new technology a couple of years after buying it, the guts inside can just be transformed into whatever you need next.

The company studied 600 electronic products, and found that a kit of less than 15 modular parts could build 80% of the gadgets on the market. The shape and the software might be different, but the things that make your Nest or drone work—and what give it its environmental footprint—are basically the same.

Fast Company

Measures to increase the supply and reduce the demand were accelerated, overseen by the Water Authority, a powerful interministerial agency established in 2007.

Desalination emerged as one focus of the government’s efforts, with four major plants going into operation over the past decade. A fifth one should be ready to operate within months. Together, they will produce a total of more than 130 billion gallons of potable water a year, with a goal of 200 billion gallons by 2020.(see video on massive Sorek reverse osmosis plant below)

Israel has, in the meantime, become the world leader in recycling and reusing wastewater for agriculture. It treats 86 percent of its domestic wastewater and recycles it for agricultural use — about 55 percent of the total water used for agriculture. Spain is second to Israel, recycling 17 percent of its effluent, while the United States recycles just 1 percent, according to Water Authority data.

New York Times