You can live without love, but not without water. With summer already heating up let’s do our bit to save every drop of life we can, says Aparna Kapoor
The warning signs have been around for quite a while now, but we have preferred to ignore the facts, which are now staring right in our face. The missiles are aimed between countries and they are ready to have a battle, not for wealth or power this time, but for – WATER!
Our planet is known as the blue planet as 75% of it is water. But only 3% of it is fit for human consumption, the rest of it is either too polluted to be called potable water or is frozen in the form of glaciers.
Humans over the centuries have proven to be fatal for mother earth. Firstly, we culled the trees mindlessly and then we simply drained away water – our life line. And the journey to our own destruction will be to the point of no return if we do not pull our strings and wake up to the reality.
Enough said
There are endless debates about water wastage and shortage doing the rounds. On TV, on social media, in newspapers, even in our drawing rooms; but the problem is grave and has become like a time bomb ticking away, and if we do not address it now, this water bomb will explode in our face, drowning us all. We need to bring down the water conservation right till the individual level, there’s no time for making policies and waiting for them to get implemented. Awareness of our natural resources and the scarcity we have created for ourselves has to be put at the forefront.
The solution
Every complex problem has simple solutions. No amount of efforts on the higher level to save our rivers or divide the waters amongst the countries will prove beneficial till you and I, and every individual makes that effort to save water at individual’s end. With each person’s effort, if we can save even one bucket of water every day, imagine how much water will be saved globally each day. Just to give you a rough idea, one bucket holds approximately three gallons of water and world’s population is around 7,632,819,325; now get your calculators out and start calculating. Yes, we will be able to fill up a river each day by making that effort of saving one bucket of water.
Do your bit
Saving water while performing daily chores will go a long way in its conservation
Every drop saved means a lot, let’s take a look at the ways we can conserve water at home.
- Instead of letting the water drain away, put a bucket under the faucet while you wait for your shower water to heat up. You can use the water for flushing the toilet or watering your plants.
- Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth. Don’t let all that water go down the drain while you brush.
- Turn off the tap while washing your hands. You do not need the water to run while you’re scrubbing your hands.
- Do not flush the toilet every time you pee. This tip can save gallons of water in each house hold.
- Fix your leaks. You don’t know how much water is wasted each hour by those leaking taps. Do your bit, fix your taps.
- Re-use the water in which you wash your vegetables or lentils. Instead of dumping it down the drain, you could use it to water the plants.
- If you feel the need to wash the car, take it to a car wash that recycles the water, rather than washing at home.
- Take a smart shower. Chose a shower head which is efficient and consumes less water. In fact all the fittings should be regularly checked for their efficiency and leakage and changes made accordingly.
- Chose plants like ground covers and succulents, which consume less water and can sustain draught conditions as well.
- Run the dishwasher or washing machine only after it’s full. Those half-loads can waste a lot of water.
- Rain water harvesting is a great way to conserve water and should effectively included in every old as well as new construction.
- Older cisterns use a lot of water to flush; switch to newer version which uses very less water yet flushes effectively.
- Water plants early in the morning, as you would need less water since cooler morning temperature means losing less water to evaporation.
- Fill up a small tub with water to rinse if you are hand washing the dishes. Do not let the maid let the tap running while she is lazily scrubbing the dishes or is running the tap full speed while rinsing.
- Try to use less electricity, especially during summer. Power plants use thousands of gallons of water to cool, if we conserve power, we are directly saving water too.
- Give a wash to your dog in the lawn or amongst the plants in your garden so that it serves the dual purpose. Just be sure that the soap you are using is not harmful for the plants.
- Re-use, Re-cycle: We can even collect the water from the washing machine and use it to flush the toilets.
- Let’s pledge that this summer when water crisis and the consumption is at a all time high and people are water deprived in many parts of our country as well as other part of the globe; we shall do whatever we can to save and conserve water. We should not only do it at the personal level but make it a community activity. Increase awareness even amongst the uneducated lot. Involve kids who are instrumental in making such agendas successful in each household. We owe this to our future generations, let’s save our bucket of water today and everyday.