32: Save Water
This week’s #52climatesolutions asks you to try some easy shifts to save water.
Every living thing on earth needs water to survive. But fresh water is a limited resource. Only 0.5% of water on earth is available for drinking. We need water for our homes, agriculture, energy production, and manufacturing. But many industrial and domestic activities pollute water, and it’s more expensive to recover polluted water than to conserve fresh water in the first place. Desalination applies reverse osmosis or other (energy-hungry) methods to convert sea water to drinkable water, which has been a saving grace for some places (e.g. Kuwait). But desalinisation is very expensive and can damage marine ecosystems. It’s much more cost-effective to conserve fresh water, if you can.
Climate change presents another threat to our access to fresh water. In some places, warmer air means it will rain where it once snowed (the resulting faster runoff will be harder to capture for storage). In the sub-tropics, climate change leads to reduced rainfall in already-dry regions. We’ll continue to see heavier rain in some areas and less in others. In recent years, we’ve already seen the influence of drought with bushfires and devastating flooding. Times of flood can mean water pollution and fresh water scarcity. It’s projected that half of the world’s population will live in water-stressed regions by 2050.
There are politics to this too. In Australia, state governments permit the extraction and purchase of our fresh water resources. When we lose control over water resources, we become less resilient. Let’s not be held to the vested interests of a few powerful people, and to the water prices they wish to set for us. Water should be freely available to all, and equitably shared.
This week’s #52climatesolutions asks you to try some easy shifts to save water. Try washing clothes only when dirty, shower less often, place a bucket in your shower to catch water while it warms up, then use the captured water on the garden or to flush your loo. Siphon bathwater onto the garden. Link a grey water hose to your washing machine outlet, consider a tank to collect water from your roof, or a composting loo! Treat water as a precious resource. Write to MPs and tell them you’d like them to do the same! And support Water Aid who are working to provide access to clean water for all.
More ideas and links for saving water
If you have a garden space, observe how water flows through the landscape.
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