And since we don’t pay enough for water, it’s hard to keep maintaining pipes. Which means leakages that leads to water shortage because of wastage. Makes you want to go and yell GAH!
Water rate
A water rate is charged for supplying water to either a public or private system to ensure sustainable water management and distribution. In cities, for instance, the water demand is around 135 litres per capita daily (lpcd) but in villages, it’s 40 lpcd1.
The real price of bottled water
Bottled water is so horrible for the environment and often has contaminants. Crazy! But then sometimes you’re travelling and you don’t always get clean, safe water for consumption. Then the only option is to buy bottled water. When you do buy bottled water, make sure the plastic bottle gets recycled properly. Else, off it goes down our waterways, polluting our oceans and causing havoc for marine life.
HEY, CAN YOU HEAR THAT GURGLING SOUND? DOWN, DOWN, DOWN THE BIN. THAT’S WATER GOING DOWN THE BIN.
Suppose you have a leaky tap at home, and it leaks three litres per hour ever day (you can put a bucket and measure it. But no, instead go repair it. Stop procrastinating). How do you know how much water is being wasted?
Count the number of drips in a minute and then visit http://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-drip.html to actually count the litres of water down the drain.
But apart from leaky taps, when you waste food, you’re also wasting water.
Say you had an apple and roti sabzi in your dabba. You ate the roti sabzi, but didn’t eat the apple. It lay forgotten in a corner of your bag, shrivelling up and becoming smelly, until your classmates complained, and you had to chuck that mega-old apple. Congratulations. You’ve just flushed 80 litres of water down the drain!
One apple that’s chucked in the bin means you may as well be pouring 80 litres of water away. That’s 80 medium-sized bottles down the drain.
Stop yanking my chain, you say? It’s simple logic.
In order to grow food and even make clothes, agriculture needs water. That includes irrigation, processing, transport, the entire super-long process. To grow enough cotton for a pair of jeans1, it takes something like 6,813 litres of water!
In India, we waste almost 40 per cent of the food produced, even before it gets to our homes2! That’s a little less than half. In fact, we waste as much food as much is eaten in the whole of the United Kingdom.
How much water do we use across the world when it comes to food?
Something like 3.8 trillion m3 (cubic metres) per year! Seventy per cent is used for agriculture3. According to a report, Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not:
Food for 1 person: 3,000 kcal per day by 2050
Diet: 80 per cent plant + 20 per cent animals
Water needed to produce that amount of food: 1,300 m3 per person per year.
That’s half an Olympic-sized swimming pool per person. If you haven’t seen one, then look for one. These pools are huge!
That’s nuts!
It takes 4.16 litres of water to grow one almond1!
RACK YOUR BRAINS
Want to know your Water Footprint?
Then visit http://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/interactive-tools/personal-water-footprint-calculator/ to calculate how much water you use and waste.
Note it down here.
THEY SAY THAT THE NEXT WARS WILL BE NOT OVER OIL OR LAND, BUT OVER WATER. IS THAT TRUE?
Out of the seven billion people on Earth, almost one billion don’t have access to safe drinking water. That’s one in seven people1.
What is believed is that when two countries share water basins, one will use the other as ‘leverage’. For example, although India and Bangladesh share fifty-four rivers2 between them, there’s always been some trouble about sharing it. Tsk tsk, don’t they listen to moral science mottos? Love thy neighbour as you will unto yourself.
You can see the same thing happening between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, over who gets what share of Cauvery’s water.
In fact, some think that water use will become a weapon! Like closing access to water or contaminating it deliberately. That will be super nasty, and it’s not the same thing as hosing someone down as a prank.
SO ARE WE DOOMED TO A THIRSTY FUTURE? WHAT NOW?
You know the answer. Come on now. It’s simple—DON’T WASTE WATER.
These are simple tips:
▶Turn off taps while brushing your teeth.
▶Take shorter showers. Ooh maybe you can time your family.
▶Fix leaks immediately.
▶Water plants with (non-toxic) recycled water.
▶Wash your bicycle with a bucket not a hose.
▶Don’t waste food and water.
▶Eat local fruits and veggies because it takes a lot of water to get them to travel to you.
And it’s easy enough to think of more ways. But the question is—will you?
Postcard from Katy Lackey
Big time savings for water
Katy loves chai but for that she needs water. Which is why she works as a research specialist at the Water Environment Research Foundation in Virginia. She also spent six years working with World Camp, Inc. in Lilongwe, Malawi, and in Ahmedabad to keep her tea supply going. Okay not really, but she did that mainly to improve community health while protecting natural resources.
Finding and fixing leaks in our water infrastructure is one of the most important things we can do to conserve water (and energy!). This is difficult because almost all of the pipes that carry our water through cities are buried in the ground and we don’t see what happens to them. On average, cities around the world lose 30 per cent of the water in their system through leaky pipes. In many developing countries the loss is closer to 50 per cent.
This means that half of the water we take from rivers or pump from aquifers and treat for human consumption never actually reaches us! This is called non-revenue water because the utility pays to pump and treat it, but it never gets delivered to us, the consumer. Think how much water we could save, if all the water we take was used.
We can recycle plastics, glass, and many other things, but is it possible to recycle water?
Yes! In fact, in a sense, all water we use to drink, cook, wash, or make things is actually water that has been recycled many times already. It has changed form again and again, but the planet as a whole has not lost or gained any water. Scientists say that, technically, we are drinking the same water the dinosaurs did millions of years ago.
So all water is recycled over time. Nature slowly breaks down the contaminants that people, animals, and industry put in water by using it. As water flows in rivers, through soils into the ground, or evaporates back into the air only to come down again with the rain, it is cleaned and replenished.
But the cool thing is that we can speed up this natural process. There have been many advancements in technology that allow us to purify waste water coming out of our homes into water even cleaner than water in a protected river.
Waste water is the dirty water that flows from toilets either back into the river or to the treatment plant in our city or town. Many people are afraid to drink waste water that has been recycled, because it sounds gross to drink. Recycled water is a great way to conserve water, however, and as more and more areas face drought and water scarcity, we will have to get over this yuck factor. Remember, we are already drinking recycled water!
Just a few years ago, Witchita Falls in Texas had so little water due to a long drought, that the town began using recycled water for drinking. People learned how the water was purified and once they tasted it, they realized it was just like their other drinking water. In Singapore, people have been drinking recycled water for years!
But most places will have to pass specific laws and regulations before people can start drinking recycled water. For now, many water scarce areas around the world are already using recycled water for irrigation (agriculture takes a LOT of water). Hopefully recycled water for drinking will be next.
Postcard from Mithil Shah
Rain, rain, come again
Mithil has a boring (okay, not that boring) 9 to 5 job in Scotland but he has studied sustainability and lectures all his friends about rainwater harvesting. Like he’s just about to lecture you.
Much of India depends on rain when it comes agriculture. But we need water for pretty much everything. Lakes and rivers are good examples of harvesting fresh water—they capture rainwater naturally. Rain water is also captured by the ground and that replenishes ground water levels.
Here’s what it’s like to do rainwater harvesting at home. Imagine this: When it rains, take one bucket or lots of buckets and fill them up with rainwater. When the buckets are full, quickly transfer the water to big tanks and fill them up. Similarly, rainwater harvesting system is like a big bucket that can be set up on a terrace or a garden to capture rainwater and safely save it in the tank or ground. If an entire community or building shares the cost of rainwater harvesting, then it’s not expensive. If we don’t capture rainwater in cities, it drains away, into the sewage and back into the sea.
How can one tank make a difference?
If everybody harvests fresh water, our water problem will reduce. Save every drop and it will create an ocean, similarly save every drop of water and we will need less fresh water from the lakes and rivers since we have our own source of water.
How is my local government helping me?
It is compulsory in most states across India to do rainwater harvesting1, especially in new buildings. This includes Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu. In some of the metros, new buildings will not be given Occupational Certificate without rainwater harvesting systems.
WHAT DID PEOPLE IN ANCIENT INDIA DO WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE COOL TECHNOLOGY LIKE WE DO NOW?
Actually, they have done very well, some even better than us.
Ever seen a step well? It’s a deep well with steps cut into its side so you can climb down to draw water. Called ‘vav’ in Gujarat (that is not wow in doge speak) and ‘baolis’ in Rajasthan, step wells have been used to store and manage water resources since the tenth century BCE. Step wells were used for irrigation—water was channelled to the fields. Most step wells were intricately carved and beautifully designed. In fact, they were also hang-out places for locals, because the water kept the place cool. See, that’s why they didn’t need air-conditioning back then. Also it wasn’t invented yet, but that’s beyond the point.
Go tripping
Rani-ki-vav in Patan in Gujarat was built in the eleventh century CE with seven levels of staircases. Intricately carved, the well was designed as an inverted temple, because water was considered sacred.
RACK YOUR BRAINS
Research online or in books for indigenous ways of storing and managing water in India.
Step well is one example. Many communities in India have their own ways of conserving water. Here are a few names of practices to get you started. See if you can match them to the part of India they come from.
▶Johads
▶Check dams
▶Vav
▶Naulas
▶Dongs
▶Bamboo drip irrigation
▶Ahar pynes
▶Dungs
▶Bhandaras
▶Virdas
▶Pats (not the one you give on backs)
▶Keres
▶Zings
Meet India’s Water Man
Who needs Iron Man and Spider-Man, when there’s India’s Water Man. Rajendra Singh has been working in the arid landscape of Rajasthan with communities to revitalise precious water resources. Using traditional practices of rainwater harvesting, Rajendra Singh worked with the community to repair, maintain and build traditional check dams or johads, so that villagers can conserve rainwater, instead of relying on bore-wells that deplete ground water. In 2001, he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.
Also, meet Aabid Surti
Aabid Surti is a writer and painter who lives in Mumbai. He’s also someone who cannot stand to see water wasted. But unlike most people he didn’t just repair his tap leak and was contented. Instead, he started the Drop Dead Foundation.
As his website, www.ddfmumbai.com reveals:
‘In 2007, Aabid launched Drop Dead Foundation after a leaking faucet at a friend’s house bothered him so much and caused an epiphany. Since then, Aabid’s Drop Dead team (consisting of a plumber, a volunteer, and Aabid himself) makes the rounds every Sunday fixing plumbing leaks in the Mira Road suburb where he lives. Today, Drop Dead Foundation continues to provide free plumbing services to Mumbai households.’
Aabid Surti is eighty-one years old and making a difference, one leaky tap at a time.
SO MANY MEN, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN IN WATER?
In rural parts of India, women are responsible for managing water for the household. In fact, every second woman there has walked some 173 kilometres to lug water in 2012. That’s because they don’t get water piped into the house. Instead, they have to walk for kilometres and kilometres to fetch water. Some even walk up to 10 kilometres and others have to go six times to fetch water. These are not paved roads we are talking about. Also, a filled up pot is as heavy as your school bag would be if you put all your books inside it. Walking long distances to collect water in many parts of the world can be dangerous for young women (or men).
India
Africa
Latin America
There can be all sorts of violence they are subject to. Often girls miss out on school because they have to help out at home in tasks such as these.
RACK YOUR BRAINS
As cities go deeper and deeper into villages to meet their water requirements, will women have to walk longer distances?
Can you think how not having water for sanitation impacts the health of women and children and the environment? When there’s less water, how does it affect nutrition for children and families?
TO DO OR NOT TO DO,
THAT’S REALLY UP TO YOU
ACTION 1
Make it rain
With temperatures rising and plummeting, rainfall patterns are getting disrupted! Here’s a simple experiment where you can create your own rainfall, inside a glass jar.
Fill a bowl with hot water. Now pour it into a big glass jar—about one third—and cover it with a glass plate. Condensation will start forming on the sides.
While the jar sits on the table, get some ice cubes from the fridge. After a minute put the ice cubes on top of the plate. You may not hear thunder, but it will begin to rain inside the jar. Water droplets will form and trickle over the sides of the jar.
Now you know what Zeus or Indra feels like.
The science is simple—there’s warm air inside the jar. The ice makes the plate cold, and the warm air rises up, condenses, and forms water droplets.
Too easy?
ACTION 2
Create a rain cloud
Let’s take it up a notch, and make a rain cloud!
You will need a glass jar, shaving cream, water mixed with food colour.
Fill the jar three-fourths with water. Now spray a generous amount of shaving cream on top and cover the surface of the water. That’s your cloud.
Drop the coloured water and the food colouring slowly on top of the shaving cream. You can use a pipette. As the shaving cream cloud gets full of water, it will start falling through the cloud, to the ground. That’s just like clouds that fill up with condensation, gain mass and then it rains.
You will see swirls of clouds forming in the water below the shaving cream.
ACTION 3
Conduct a Water Behaviour Audit
A Water Audit does sound Very Important, and it is. And honestly, we just cannot trust the adults alone with something as precious as water.
Audit your family members by asking them about their attitude towards water—you can add your own questions if you like. Recommendation: Wear a lab coat, carry a clipboard, and make Hmmm sounds to each r
esponse. Works without the props as well.
Here’s the scoring sheet:
Never: 0
Sometimes: 5
Always: 10
Questions
1.I shower for five minutes and not more.......
2.When brushing my teeth, I turn off the water.......
3.I use the garden hose, instead of a bucket and mop, while washing the car/scooter/bike.......
4.I repair leaking tap immediately.......
5.I run the washing machine when it’s full.......
6.I call the plumber when the toilet starts leaking.......
7.Our building does rainwater harvesting.......
8.Our building recycles grey water.......
9.I reuse water from the kitchen and bath for watering plants.......
10.Make your own question.......
Now tally up the answers and make some deductions. A lot of water waste is about our behaviour and attitudes. If we think it’s okay to keep the tap running while brushing teeth or ignore a leaky tap, we are part of the problem.
ACTION 4
Calculate your food’s Water Footprint
Here’s a guide to calculating the water footprint of your food.
Typical values for the volume of water required to produce common foodstuffs:
Source: Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not by Institute of Mechanical Engineers
Calculate how much water would it take to make:
Pasta with olives and tomatoes
Omelette with cheese and tomato
A meal with chapati and potato veggie
A meal with rice and sheep meat
Your favourite meal
ACTION 5
Become an oil spill offender
What’s an oil spill? Not the one when you’re cleaning your bike and spill oil on your nicest pair of shorts. Anyway, who told you to wear them while cleaning your bike? Don’t listen to those detergent ads on telly. An oil spill also isn’t the one where you squirt cooking oil across the stove instead of the pan.
So You Want to Know About the Environment Page 7