water
I’ve been thinking a lot about drinking water water lately. Tonight on our train home I commented to E how I was thirsty and he pulled out his water bottle from this morning and offered me warm water. For half the trip I turned him down but then my thirst overcame me. If warm is the worst of my water worries, how I wish that was all any of the world had to worry about.
I don’t often drink plain water because well, I’m chronically dehydrated and I grew up with the best water ever from my back yard. Other water, no matter how clean, tastes wrong or funny to me. I also like it frigid ice cold. It took these many months at the dentist in order for me to enjoy water properly again.
So where is this going?
Yes, water, and the scarcity of clean drinking water is all over the news and has been for a few years now.
Let’s think about this. Ignoring the waste, if I wanted to I could buy a bottle of clean water and not think too much about the cost of that bottle. There is no reason why I shouldn’t get the recommended daily amount. It’s clean. It’s (relatively) cheap. I don’t need to stress about it. And that’s just for drinking! I cook and wash without thinking or worrying much about the water I consume.
But many do. For more reasons than I think I can write about. Just turn to most any news source and you’ll see stories of natural and man-made destruction that threaten the availability of this resource.
I didn’t expect to write this post today, it just happened, so unfortunately I don’t have a good list of links you could follow to donate so that others can have clean, affordable, accessible drinking water. I ask you to research and choose a place where you think they do good and send them what you can, a dollar makes a difference.
When I finally decide (though I may just send more money to MSF) I’ll try to remember to update this post.
In the meantime I’m working to reduce the non-compost waste we produce as I believe it is a step toward helping conserve and preserve. Some weeks are better than others. I really need to break my zip-lock bag habit, even if I reuse them until they are very worn. One step at a time.
At another time I’ll talk about our gardening choices.
What are you doing to help? Do you have a favourite resource that helps explain this situation?
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For gardening water, my buddy Kurt uses rain water. He has a huge plastic trash barrel below a gutter from the roof. Every time it rains, it tops off the barrel. He has a small spigot he put into the bottom of the barrel and attached a hose. He has NEVER paid for water to water his vegetable garden, and he’s done this for years.
Reusable containers, quick showers, and we don’t (ever) water the grass. Winter temp at 67-68 days and 60 overnight. Summer temp 78-80 (78 I can happily live with, 80 when the AC can’t better manage the 95 outside).
But – Pine Barrens? I guess we never did play “Jewish geography”, did we?
We rarely buy bottled water — we almost always schlep our own in bike water bottles. (Though I am told that for non-bike use we are switching to camelback hard plastic bottles as per the direction of Squidette and Mike.)
We make our own yogurt saving hundreds of tiny yogurt containers a year. Mike bakes our sandwich bread though since we store them in single use bags we’re not helping much there.
The adults in the house commute by bicycle as often as possible, eschewing public and automobile transportation in favor of the zero carbon footprint of the bike.
Reusable bags for most of our grocery shopping.
That said, we still produce plenty of waste and are slowly trying to cut it back.