Smart Ways to Get Our Shit Together This World Water Day

They say it’s better down where it’s wetter, but when it comes to the world’s water supply, things couldn’t be any worse. While for many of us, drinking water is just a tap away, 2.1 billion people across the world lack access to safe drinking water resources and 80 percent of the wastewater flows back into the system. Things get even worse in India, with WaterAid—a non-profit organisation that attempts to improve access to safe water and sanitation—estimating that over a billion Indians live in water-scarce areas.

Basically, we’re fucked. Not only have our actions angered the climate change gods, but it’s only a matter of time before we’ve drained our planet of its most significant resource. India is the leading consumer of groundwater and its third largest exporter, which is why our groundwater reserves have fallen harder than our Microsoft Excel ratings. There’s a lot of damage to be undone and not enough people who realise it.

Today, March 22, happens to be World Water Day, a UN-declared initiative with the theme of ‘Leaving No One Behind’. It also happens to be the day after Holi, a festival that leaves behind chemical colours that pollute the water, besides using the limited liquid resource as a source of entertainment via water guns and balloons.

While we might be more familiar with carbon footprint, we need to start looking at our 'water footprint' as well—a term that refers to the amount of water taken to produce an item we might use.

So what steps can we take as individuals to save our life-giving liquid resource? We asked some global warming activists and entrepreneurs that work to increase the efficiency of water consumption to show us the way.

Jack and Jill may have gone up the hill, but women in India continue to break their backs walking many miles just to fetch that pail of water. While metros have a steady flow of water coming in through taps, on an average, an Indian woman from a rural area walks 5-20 km to quench her thirst, while women are globally known to spend up to 200 million hours every day collecting water. Inequality in distribution of water has always been an issue, linking it to inequality in distribution of wealth. An RTI (Right to Information) applicant filed by a journalist revealed that urban Maharashtra gets 400 percent more than village Maharashtra.

Abhishek Chanchal, a member of Greenpeace India, believes that since many NGOs are funded by CSR campaigns of corporates, they stay wary of stepping up against them despite the damage they do to our oceans. “First step in changing this is for the government to phase out from coal and adopt clean energy. We need a policy for equal distribution of water resources, and individuals also need to think about clean energy options like adopting rooftop solar for energy,” he says.

Water meters that help you track the amount of water consumption in your building are a great starting point. Having such a system in place not only shows you how much you’re using, but also helps change those patterns, thus cutting down overall costs.

“People tell you to save water, but nobody tells you how to, so we have made it a measurable and actionable item to raise awareness,” says Abhilash Haridass, co-founder at WeGoT Utility Solutions. Haridass works with a water measurement model that uses sensors built with the Internet of Things technology, using internet data to give more accurate calculations of water usage. This is an upgrade from the usual water meters which run on turbines and may show flawed figures since they don’t account for the air pressure and water that flows backwards when you shut the tap.

This device not only measures your water consumption, but also provides you with information about a leaky pipe or a tap you might not have properly closed, via an app to ensure that there is minimal wastage of water. While efforts to take this project to an agricultural level are underway, there are even talks to take it to the national level as a basic requisite while constructing a building. “We have saved more than 300 million litres, are present in 20,000+ apartments and manage water in more than 20 million sq.ft of commercial space. Right now, we are doing it free of charge with a monthly maintenance cost of Rs 149 to make our model more affordable for everyone,” says Haridass.

Meanwhile, The Elbow Engineers is a Chennai-based startup run by Jyothsna Kumar that won the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge in 2018 for an invention that tries to convert water vapour in the atmosphere into pure, drinkable water. Through a process that converts the humidity in the air to molecules that become water and then filters it to make it fit for consumption, this is an attempt to literally produce water out of thin air!

13-year-old climate change activist and student from Delhi, Ram, says that in order to be more responsible about his water usage, he uses one bucket of water while bathing and makes sure he shuts the tap while brushing his teeth. Being mindful about the water we use is something we have to consciously do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a little tip from technology.

Tap aerators—devices that break up the stream of water flowing to reduce its volume—are easily available online, and are a quick and cheap way to waste less. This technology has advanced into specially designed nozzles with companies like Altered that claim to reduce the water flow by 98 percent and save 3 million litres of water all over the world on a daily basis through this.

“There is not enough focus on water issues in India because there is a lot of political gambit involved”, says Rashi, media coordinator at Pratyek, an NGO that works towards protecting and promoting all rights and opportunities to every child in India, and who was also involved in the Delhi edition of the school strike against climate change organised by Fridays for Future. She says that while government initiatives like Delhi Jal Board are supposed to supply water to everyone, issues like water hoarding can create a breeding ground for diseases like dengue and affect the quality of the water, making it unsafe for consumption. “With water and land, there are very specific demands that need correction. You need equal distribution; you need to be able to hold the government accountable.”

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