This post is a part of Neer, a collaborative project by DCB Bank and Chaaipani to bring out stories of individuals and initiatives that are working hard and smart to save water.
I’d like to begin this story with reference to a movie I saw, end of October on global warming, Before The Flood. There was a lot covered by Leonardo Di Caprio in his travels, and the conclusion is what we have already established, global warming is here to disrupt lives, unless we take steps to prevent its impact on our generations to come. How is it related to the title that you read up there? So global warming is actually affecting the potable water, and we’re very unconsciously wasting a portion of it in our everyday usage.
No, I am not asking you to carry water in the hollowed palm of your hand. But here is a story brought to us by Divya Ramchandran and how the kids in her class are doing their part to save water and contribute to the environment.
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I work at a School called Kids Central. I teach a 2nd-grade classroom and this term we focused on water conservation as a part of primary learning during our Social Responsibility class. We made students discuss how water is wasted on a daily basis and how much can be done by saving it.
We looked into how water can be saved at School. Students went around in the school to make sure there were no leaking taps or A.C’s. But they found a few leaking A.C’s around the campus. So, the students suggested that we could keep a bucket under each of them, and the water collected every day was used to water the plants in the garden.
Some students recognized another interesting point. They realized that a lot of them don’t finish the water in their water bottles every day. Most of them go back home to have it being poured down the drains, the bottles washed and cleaned to be refilled the next day. This was happening in every class, not just one. This meant gallons of water was being wasted every day. Could there be a way to use this water effectively?
The students placed 3 tubs near the school gates. All the students who were leaving the School at the end of the day were to drop any extra water they had in their bottles in the tub before they left.
The amount of water collected was measured every day and it filled up more than just 3 buckets. An analysis of how much water was wasted was done in the school by the students and it was collectively decided by them that this water should be used to water the garden in the school and the grass in the football field, instead of using sprinklers or hoses.
We used a can with a tap instead of one bucket, into which the kids poured any extra water. This was then placed outside near construction work area nearby for the workers to drink water from.
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Smaller adjustments to the way of living create a great change for our coming generations. Would you like to answer to your next generation that we idly stood by and watched our go to dumps? Or that we did whatever was within our reach, even if to save ourselves from the guilt of it and but we did something.
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