A week’s difference
During a period of 7 days, I’ve tried to reduce the amount of water I use and have achieved, though only a small amount, a slight reduction of water consumption. As I don’t take baths or have the choice of what type of shower heads I use, I try to reduce the time spent showering everyday from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. I didn’t change a lot of my eating proportions, though I tried to eat less sweets and meat this week. The number of times I shower and wash my hands or teeth remained unchanged as I see that as something necessary for hygienic purpose.
It was a bit difficult at first as the 20 minutes showering routine has been such a natural habit to me, but gradually I did get quicker at showering more easily. I also try to reduce wasted running water by turing off the shower immediately when I don’t need it, though I still find this difficult because I hate the cold.
I would definitely continue this change even after the 7 days period, as not only does this shortened shower period saved water, it has also saved me time. It is shocking to know that one can reduce the amount of water consumed in a week just by adjusting little things everyday. People always say that little things count, but we never really know the real power of these little actions until we try them ourselves.
There are a lot of things we don’t know about water, what is in it, how it is distributed, what we are doing to it, and what that does to us. According to watefootprint.org, a bag made from bovine leather has a water footprint of 17093 litre/kg. We never would have expected such an amount of water used in a handbag that is dry and doesn’t seem to have any correlation with water. There are many other things that consumes water but almost come too naturally what we never paid attention to it. This includes the bread we eat, coffee we drink and the steak cooked at dinner. When we think about it, it may still appear as a small number, but as shown on the water footprint I did, even small changes can contribute to a better change.
There are many simple things we can do to help reduce water consumption as a community. Government should raise awareness of such problem and campaign about it. After all, it is an act that not only helps the environment, but at the same time also helps consumers save money on water bills. For private industries, a big part of water usage would be to act as a coolant for the machines. If businesses understand the risk of one day water being a scarce result, they would be more motivated to come up with new techniques or strategies that operates the use of water in a more efficient way. Government can also give subsidise to industries that invest in such a technology to promote water saving. As a resident of any country, we should all try our best to cut out unnecessary usage of water, and minimalist it. If possible, it would be nice to have an application that allows people to enter the data of their water consumption and use that to give suggestions as of how to reduce their water footprint — friends can then look at each other’s water footprint and engage in friendly competition.
In my opinion, the people that can make the most impact would be the residents of the city itself. They are large in number, and are the main target of any industries. They are the consumers. If they know about the importance of reducing water consumption, and are willing to engage in that, this would definitely encourage the industries to change their method of producing goods in order to reduce water usage. It would be nice if designers can collaborate with government and industries to design banners on the selling rack, or on the packaging, just like how ‘smoking kills’ is printed on top of cigarette boxes. It would be most affective to put these messages on places where consumers will see. This includes alongside the queue in supermarkets (when they buy meat, vegetables… which all require the consumption of water), on the packaging of shampoos and other bathing essentials (to remind consumers not to shower for a long time).
I hope that one day, as a designer, as a team with the industries rather than enemies, we can all help contribute to saving the consumption and make the world a little bit more sustainable.
Below is a simple bottle wrap design I drew as an example:
Citations:
http://waterfootprint.org/en/about-us/
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse.html
