You might have probably stumbled in public washroom and found pictograph saying - “every drop counts!” posted on the mirror.
How about the revolutionary touch-free male urinal bowl with tag line – “it conserves up to 40,000 gallons of fresh water a year”
I think you have.
While it sounds like truth, most of us really do not know the exact figures of water being conserved on that slogans.
Silhouette of Acacia trees near Sunken Garden at University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City
Did you find yourself facing your laptop in the middle of a pitch black? No any sounds other than the breeze of cool air coming from the outside and casual murmuring of trees as if they are talking about you in some distance that you can’t see or locate? It’s a mix of frightening and annoying at the same time for me.
It was around 10 o'clock in the evening and my daughter came down in the dark with the question – “Daddy please fix the electricity. I can’t go back to sleep.” I later learned one of the electric transformers went down. I told my daughter that we should grab our own fan (pamaypay) and go to sleep. There is no Electricity for the meantime.
After realizing the inevitable consequences of no electricity which leads to water supply going off, I collected water for use in the morning for some various house chores and personal cleaning.
In the morning, all of us were soaking wet with perspiration and tired of fanning ourselves. No electricity yet.
I got up and headed straight to the bathroom to take a bath for work. I thought about how many liters of water I should use. I remember a research experiment we did in class on WATER CONSERVATION.
We were tasked to observe the time and the amount of water we use in taking a bath and reflect on water conservation.
Below were few conditions:
In the exercise, I used bucket with a capacity of 23 liters, a dipper with a capacity of 1.2 liters and a basin capable of accumulating 15 liters of water were used for collection of data.
The first trial was performed after arriving home from work. The second and third trials were done at the beginning of the day so the time was shorter than the first because I was in a hurry.
| Trial No. | Total time | Water used (Li) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.18 min | 23 |
| 2 | 2.21 min | 35 |
| 3 | 2.48 min | 33 |
In second part, 59 liters of grey water was gathered. All of this was used to flush the toilet bowl for half a day.
| Trial No. | Grey Water (Li) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 16 |
| 2 | 23 |
| 3 | 20 |
Our water bills show 40-45 m3 average water consumption for a span of 4 months. In the exercise stated above, if practiced for a week in a household of four (4), we will have accumulated an estimate of 1,600 liters of grey water or about 6,600 liters in a month. This water would be used to save toilet water for half a month.
This process will have reduced our water consumption at an estimated 6.6 m3 and would have saved us Php 189 from our water bill for a month.
Fresh surface and groundwater is a limited resource since about 97% of Earth’s water is salty. However, out of the 3% remaining fresh water, two-thirds is frozen as ice and snow. To add to this, liquid water seeps into the ground as groundwater.
This leaves us to conclude that there remains less than 1% of Earth’s fresh liquid water on the surface.[1]
How can 1% of the Earth’s available water support 7.5 billion of the world’s population? [2]
Areas with high densities of people, such as growing cities, has an increasing demand for fresh water which threatens the availability of water for its population.
Having said this, making clean water available for human consumption and personal use can be a challenge. Earth’s less than 1% fresh water available is valuable and for most, that is learned the hard way.
I spent 2 years working at a Wastewater Treatment Plant for a company that produces microchips for car stereos. Treating this wastewater coming from production area and domestic water from Canteen requires many stages of treatment and involves sophisticated equipment before it is finally released to nearby rivers. These treatment processes include screening to ensure no solid materials can enter and clog the equipment. Next is the sedimentation stage where the solid particles are allowed to settle and use different chemicals to adhere to it. Particles will be removed by passing the water through filter membranes. This treated water is called effluent. The effluent discharges into the river after testing that it is safe enough not to harm its ecosystem.
This lengthy process ensures that we at least have a way to preserve the 1% of water usable for our daily needs such as bathing.
To end this story, I would like to thank you for reading this post and leave you with this quote:
"When the Well’s dry,
we know the Worth of Water”.
-Benjamin Franklin
References:
[1] DiSpezio, M., Frank, M., Heithaus, M., Ogie, D.. (2012). Science Fusion: Ecology and the Environment. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
[2] www.worldometers.info/world-population/
