Save Water, Seriously

I want to talk about water crisis. It’s a popular topic nowadays especially if you live in places that are affected by it. This is a rather delicate topic though because if you search about this matter online, 99% (yes, I am exaggerating) of the ‘intellectual’ results are politically-based.

Nevertheless. 

http://www.selangortimes.com/index.php?section=news&permalink=20120809130915-businesses-hit-by-water-dispute-

I read this quite some time ago about businesses were affected because their applications to obtain water from the local authority were rejected due to water shortage.

Essentially, this is one of the key reasons why we all should practice water efficiency together – as a community – not based on your stingy Return on Investment (ROI).

For example, Rainwater Harvesting System is not cheap. You can get one roughly about RM5,000 for a basic house depending on the complexity of the system. If you do your calculation marginally correct, it’ll probably save you about 20-50% of your water use.

However, our water is cheap (I’m not sure how it compares to other places though – go search online yourself). This system comes with a very long ROI – up to 25 years. This is quite similar to solar and electricity generation (cheap resources vs expensive efficiency technology). But thanks to Feed-in Tariff (FiT), the ROI for investment in solar energy can be reduced down to less than 10 years. Sadly, no such similar scheme available for water – yet.

To frame the big issue, if we recklessly waste water, we’re placing burden on our local water provider.

Take in conventional cases, our local water providers will build new water treatment plants to cater for any new demand coming through the system.  We build new houses, offices, factories and these stuffs come with new demand for resources, i.e. water and energy. It will reach to a point, if we’re not careful, demand exceeds the capacity available. 

Then our local water providers have no choice but to withhold supplies for new developments, i.e. manufacturing facilities.  Thus, investors frustrated. They’ll move on to other places and bring their millions worth of investment elsewhere – along with the potential jobs and subsequently hurt the local future economy.

And I haven’t even touched on how by collecting your rainwater (plus the fact that your house is causing adverse effect to the local water run-offs), you can significantly reduce risk of flood in your neighbourhood – plus other neighbouring neighbourhood too. Therefore save the potential and needless expenses to solve flood problems.

But let’s that be another topic for another day.

In the meantime, save water, or else.
 

NJB