Q1.
Do you feel that water is being used efficiently in our daily activities? Have you observed water being wasted in your daily activities?
Answer
No — in most homes and schools water is not used efficiently. Once you start looking, wastage is visible everywhere.
- The tap left running while brushing teeth, soaping hands or shaving.
- Leaking taps and pipes — a tap dripping once a second wastes several buckets a day.
- Overflowing overhead tanks because nobody switched the motor off.
- Washing a scooter, a car or the courtyard with a running hosepipe.
- Watering the garden at noon, when much of it simply evaporates.
- Running the washing machine or the tap for just two or three utensils.
Why we do not notice: water arrives at the turn of a tap, so it feels endless. But behind that tap is a river, a lake or a borewell that is not endless at all. In many parts of India people have to walk long distances to fetch drinking water — and everyone does not have the same access to it.
Check it yourself: Put a mug under a dripping tap in the morning and see how much has collected by evening. That is the water one small leak throws away every single day.