Coping With Water Scarcity - the theme for today's Water Watch Day for Penang State.
At the opening ceremony, the chairman of Water Watch Penang, Dr Chan mentioned about the scarcity and the amount of water he used per day. Penang is a poor state in term of water sources availability. Hence, we just can't take water for granted anymore.
There is one point he mentioned that I would like to share here - the toilet flush! Little did I know that what I have been doing was also practised by Dr Chan. He usually flushed the toilet after several calls. For every 3 calls you only flush once then you are actually saving 2 X 18 liters of water per day. If a million Penangites will to save 32 liters per day. How much liters for a million? Calculated as 1000000 X 32 liters = 32000000! A whooping 32 million liters per day.
How I do it
When at home, I will frequent the toilet every 1.5 hours. For the whole daylight hour (12 hrs), I would have used the toilet for 8 times. Usually I only flush when it stinks! And the stinking only happened about 6 hours later. So for a day I only flush twice - saving 6 X 32 liters = 192 liters.
I checked my latest PBA's bill (April 2007). My household used 31000 liters for duration of 2 months. FYI, Penang's water bills are send out every two month.
Calculation - My Household Water Consumption
31000 liters divided by 2 mths = 15500 liters per month
15500 liters divided by 30 days = 516.6 liters per day
516.6 liters divided by 3 persons in my household = 172 liters per person per day.
After looking at the 192 liters that I saved from the flushing of my toilet, I now realize the important of NOT flushing. The orang asli don't have flush toilet. When I was living in Kampung in the 60s, I used bucket system - unhygienic but I don't flush. When I go camping I don't flush. There are no toilet in the jungle and there is no need to flush after each release. Don't you think modern day livings are sheer wastage? Not eco-friendly? Depleting natural resources?
Now you have this option to save water:
Reduce your flushing of the toilet (if it stinks then use a small scoop of water instead)
Or perhaps, we should go primitive.
I used 172 liters per day! You? Let me know ok?
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1 comment:
Dear Forest, thank you for your excellent water use of only 172 litres per day. For your information, my daily water use is 140 litres. I am a pretty normal guy who takes 2 showers and drink 2 litres of water a day. But what I can do to save water is to cut down on shower time, reduce the water pressure during shower & switch off the shower when soaping or shampooing. I also use biodegradable shampoo which is easy to rinse off & does not pollute the environment. Of course, the best way is to flush less like what you are doing. After you come home from work, you need only flush just before you go to bed even though you urinate 5 times (if you defecate, you must flush). For more information on water saving tips visit Water Watch penang's website www.waterwatchpenang.org
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