Do Good, Be Good
Save Water
Earth looks like a watery planet, yet very little of its water is ready to use. Let's discover why every drop matters and how people have saved water for centuries!
Did you know?
If all of Earth's water filled 40 buckets, 39 of them would be salty sea water. And most of the last bucket, the fresh water, is frozen as ice or hidden underground!
In cold, dry Ladakh, people build 'ice stupas': tall cones of frozen winter water, like small man-made glaciers. The first, built in 2013–14, was 6 metres high. The cone shape melts slowly, giving farmers water in spring and summer.
Rajendra Singh, called the 'Waterman of India', and his group helped build more than 8,600 johads (small earth dams that catch rainwater) and other water structures in Rajasthan. Five dried-up rivers began to flow again!
Try this: Bottle Water Rescue
At the end of each day, collect the water left over in everyone's bottles and glasses in a bucket, instead of pouring it down the sink. Measure it with a mug and write the number on a chart. Use the water for your plants or to mop the floor. After a week, add up your mugs. How much water did your family rescue?
Go further: Rain Maths on Your Roof
Rooftop rainwater harvesting means collecting rain from roofs in tanks, or sending it into special pits so that it refills the water underground. Here is some rain maths: 1 millimetre of rain falling on 1 square metre of roof gives 1 litre of water. So a 100-square-metre roof could collect up to 1,000 litres in a 10-millimetre shower! Ask whether your school or building harvests rainwater.