WATER on tap.
For most Saffers, it’s our daily expectation, accessed without thought. It’s almost muscle memory to, for example, rinse a dish before washing it, letting the excess run down the drain; ditto for hands.
As we mark World Environment Day tomorrow, here are some thoughts from a couch that went without for two weeks. That was long and horrible, but how much worse it must have been for some whose drought lasted 52 days. And those who permanently have no access apart from a river or communal tap.
Our two-week dry spell had an enormous and lasting effect. Apart from having to negotiate space for the numerous 5l bottles we have now stashed to be prepared, it has changed daily life.
One of the (dare I say hangovers?) is a healthy paranoia about conserving our water supply. Once a day, the kitchen sink is filled with hot soapy water. To get it hot, a 2l jug is filled with the first cold water that comes out of the tap and the dog water or kettle is topped up. Accumulated dishes get washed in the hot, clean water, which is then used throughout the day for hand-washing. Dishes made dirty later get rinsed by scooping a tiny puddle of the “clean” water into them and that’s discarded, so the soapy water stays clean enough to wash up, sometimes for two days.
Our 5l bottles are used to fill the (very large) dog bowl and rotated so we will always have a reservoir of fresh water. Any sandy dog water – one of the five insists on putting both front paws in the bowl – goes into the bird bath or a sulking plant.
If you’re not in an office, there’s no need to flush every time you have a pee.
I learnt from the buckets carried from the pool (not by me, which made it more awkward because I had to ask the granny flat kids for said bucket) that each flush used 5 litres. I shudder now at all that wasted water. And if you say that’s smelly, there’s a health warning right there: you are dehydrated and must drink more water. That’s one thing you can’t cut down on.
We also pool (pun intended) our dirty clothes and linen so we have no wasty half-loads. Cuts down on the soap that lands in the oceans too.
Sometimes the fight to save the environment sounds too daunting for individuals to make an impact, but every one of us can and should. Environment is not only carbon emissions. It’s caring for our own environment and ecosystem – recycling and avoiding single-use plastic, planting indigenous, understanding the life chain from soil to birds in your surroundings. Just consider if what you’re doing causes harm – does that spider really need to die because you don’t like it, or can it hang around to kill the flies and then be a good snack for Gary the gecko? Does everything need to be cleaned with harsh chemicals or killed with poison or pesticides?
The world environment starts with you – just being more aware of the health of your own little ecosystem can contribute to the big, beautiful, blue picture that is our planet.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor.
The Independent on Saturday