I believe that water, which is such a crucial resource for survival, will not be abused in its use. I also believe that as people who live on planet Earth, we will respect the limited amount of drinkable water we have by being smart with our usage. I believe we will one day no longer have these "water woes" of potentially approaching Day Zeros and have a lack of water.
I envision a world where everyone has the same amount of urgency of ensuring everyone has clean, drinkable water. I wish for a world where it is not just the people who are in dire need of water, such as the citizens of Cape Town that took action in reducing their water consumption as they approached Day Zero, but that everyone takes the same amount of urgency in reducing their consumption. I also envision a world where people are being smart about their resources of water by reusing it to reduce their overall water use.
For my intervention, I want to advocate for law changes to occur to help citizens implement changes in their daily lives to reuse and ultimately reduce their water consumption. In particular, I want to advocate for a bill that would ensure the government allocates some of their funding towards systems that can reuse water. As the ultimate goal would be to reduce water altogether, I recognize that this is difficult to implement for people in first-world countries, such as Canada, where their current daily routines revolve around a high use of water. However, I believe we can ultimately reach this goal by first encouraging the reuse of the copious amounts of water we use. I can imagine incentives similar to the one in Canada that currently offers a rebate for those purchasing zero-emission vehicles can also be provided for those who wish to purchase technologies that can be installed in homes to reuse shower water for toilet water. Furthermore, I wish that my advocation towards a law/bill change can include a momentary reward to citizens that use water that is under a certain amount in their household to encourage the reduction of water use in their homes. After this new program takes off, I can envision another law/bill being put into place that advocates government-funded campaigns that encourage the reduction of water use altogether. This could potentially be done by advertising the potential Day Zeros of each area so citizens can be aware of a tangible date and how urgent and dire the water crisis issue is actually.
Hi Sara Roh,
I absolutely love the idea of finding more efficient means of water recycling and definitely agree there needs to be a greater allocation of funds to increasing this sustainability. Do you know of any specific technology in the works that increases water recycling efficiency? What do you think the long term implications will be for providing rewards for reduced water usage?
I totally agree that incentivizing citizens towards environmentally friendly choices is soemthing highly productive that governments can do!
I think it is a great idea for the government to offer rebates for those who wish to install technologies that reuse grey waters in their homes! These bills are also a great idea to encouraging citizens to reduce water use and appreciate the value of water.