Water is everywhere. Most of our planet is covered in water. I look up and see clouds made out of water, and sometimes those clouds drop loads of it all over the place.
Is the world going to run out of water? No. Water gets recycled over and over through the ground, the oceans and lakes, the clouds, the precipitation, the plants and so on over and over again.
So what is with those crazy people that say we need to save water? I took basic economics in university, and I understand supply and demand. The more there is of something, the less it is worth. Water is just about worthless.
Unless you are alive, of course. Then water is really important. You are a bag of mostly water. No, I’m not hurling insults. We all are. So are bacteria and protozoa and other invisible little swimmers. They aren’t just mostly made of water, they live in water. That happens to be a problem for us, unfortunately.
The problem isn’t that the world is running out of water, but that the world has very high demand for clean water in the places where we stack all our people (cities) and squish in all our food production (farms). In these places, the supply is not sufficient, at least some of the time, for the high demands. There’s that first-year economics course coming in handy again.
The thing is, “sometimes in some places” is enough of an issue to be a really big concern, since we kind of need water every day.
Here in Iqaluit we were short on water in the reservoir last summer and it got people thinking about water even here, were we don’t have a huge population and do have lots of water nearby. They just got that problem solved in time for the massive Northmart (grocery and department store) fire in the fall where a lot of water was used. The City of Iqaluit is again asking people to conserve water here.
Top Ten Tricks
If you respond to that by saying that so much of water use is by industry and agriculture, so why fuss about what we as individuals use, you are not alone. Lots of people get lost in the enormity of big collective problems. Don’t think you need to be a hero all the time. You don’t have to solve the whole problem, just your part of it. Just because you can’t calm the whole ocean doesn’t mean you can’t control your own wake. So focus instead on the amount we as individuals use – it is not insignificant, and it is the part you can most easily change. It feels good to make a difference, and change starts at home. Put yourself on the moral high ground here. If you want to research it and change your eating habits to teach the worst offenders in agriculture a lesson, go for it. If you want to chain yourself to the gates of some water-abusing industrial operation, that’s your call.
I think we would all improve the wake we make if we were mindful of the water we use and worked to use it efficiently. What better place to work on your wake than water? So here are my Top Ten Tricks for Saving Water – it saves us money and helps out our municipalities, too!
1) Turn the tap off while you brush your teeth or any other time you aren’t actually using it. Because you aren’t using it, and because you are a very smart, capable and savvy person who is almost certainly going to be able to remember how to turn it back on in ten seconds when you need it again, and is skilled enough to do so with very little physical, mental or emotional energy. Be strong.
2) Only drink pop. Oh wait. The part that isn’t refined sugar or artificial sweetener or artificial flavour or artificial colour… okay the real part of it is water, it just came from a tap somewhere else. I thought I had a good solution there. Okay, you can still drink water to your heart’s content, you bag of mostly water you.
Okay, wait wait. That was a lousy one. Let’s try again.
2) You really want to pour water in that messy pot you just put in the sink, I know you do. Don’t. Just keep the tap over it and it will catch the water from washing hands, or rinsing other things. Steady on. Your cup will overfloweth in time.
Steady on. Your cup will overfloweth in time.
Does that sound like a metaphor? I’m really just talking about a dirty pot.
3) If you have taps with levers instead of just a dial you can turn them on and off with the back of your hand or your wrist. That means you can turn the water off while you scrub your hands. It may only be for a few seconds, but we wash our hands often, so it really adds up! It’s more relaxing, too. Take your time. Sing the alphabet.
3) Stop bathing and showering – just use lots of deodorant. One of the benefits of this is that you really don’t need to bother with laundry so much until you notice people cough after you walk by. If someone gives you a dirty look, look down at them for their selfish and ignorant water use behaviour. Being sterile is bad for your immune system. Yes, I am exaggerating, but the question is, how much?
4) Keep a jug beside the sink if you let the water run to get it cold or hot. When you let the tap run, fill up the jug. That water can be used to water plants, give to pets, rinse out pots, throw at people who give you dirty looks, etc.
5) You don’t have to flush every little pee. Pee does not bite you if it is in the toilet when you sit on it. If you have a history of falling in, then go ahead and flush (but work on that…). Pretend you are camping. When you camp, do you run to the stream to get 6L of water to pour on top of your pee? So why do you you need to flush away every single pee like it is a lurking menace at home? How many days do you wear the same pants when you are camping? Did anything bad happen? For northerners: I bet you didn’t shower or bathe, and your friends and family are still your friends and family, aren’t they? For southerners at your cute little campgrounds, many of you probably did shower everyday, but for those that didn’t – did that work out okay? I bet it did! Now try a little home camping!
6) In general, use water like you would if you had to haul it from the river. (Or, hey – if you live here, go ahead and haul it from the river – that helps, and your tea will taste better! If you live down south, unless you’ve had your river tested or you like diarrhea, maybe just imagine that you had to haul it.)
7) Catch snowflakes on your tongue. It only saves a tiny bit of water, but there are no good reasons not to.
8) Please DON’T stop using cloth diapers just because you use water to wash them – it is easy to save more water doing these other little daily things. Also, if you factor in the water used to make them, when you compare the water used for cloth and disposable it is a ‘wash’ (they are about the same).
9) Your hands are probably not on fire. So the tap does not need to be a fire hose. I know it is easy to turn the tap on full and it makes you feel powerful and fulfills your childhood dream of being a firefighter, but think of the amazing things you have learned in your life. There was a time when you couldn’t walk or talk. No not that time, I mean when you were a baby. We can learn pretty complicated things. I bet we can turn the tap on half way and still have enough water to wash our hands, our apple, our knife, etc.
10) If you want to wash your vehicle, do it at the river, not with municipal water. And give yourself your weekly bath while you’re there. Twice-weekly if you are high-maintenance.
Don’t Be That Limo Driver!
If you still aren’t sure about this, I guess I will need to anthropomorphize. That always seems to work:
So they built a reservoir, found complicated ways to fill it with water, built a water testing and treatment plant to make sure the water is cleaned and safe to drink, built pipes to run water from the reservoir to the treatment plant, then built pipes – underground – through the entire village/town/city (or bought trucks and hired people to run them everyday), to get us nice clean safe water. And so now we wouldn’t want to be just standing there while that water runs out of the tap and goes straight down the drain where it become wastewater that has to be treated and disposed of. How does that make the water feel?
It is like if they built a bridge straight from you to your dream moment of fame. You have been trained and prepared, the bridge is there. They put you in the limo and drive you over the bridge. You are ready. It is your 15 minutes of fame. But what? The limo didn’t stop. It didn’t even slow down. It drove right past and, 15 minutes later, opened the door and dumped you in a steaming puddle of… well, you get the picture. So sad – tragic even. Let’s not be that limo driver.
So. You can do lots of little things to save water, but now I have a confession to make. You won’t save water. The water will still be around us either way. What you will do is save on expensive municipal water infrastructure, save the use of environmentally active chemical agents like chlorine and flourine, save a little money, and save energy used to move it, clean it, move it, clean it, and dump it back into nature. That sounds even better.
