Harvest Water !

Harvest Water !

By Govind Swaroop Saini

I still remember drinking water which was fetched from a village pond in Barmer Rajasthan India, way back in 1991. I was already “warned” before I finally decided to attend my friend’s marriage there. He said, we are lucky to have this pond in our village, for which ladies from other villages walk for miles daily to carry water back to their home. I did visit the pond once and my first reaction was …. “..yukk..” …. still it was a source of WATER.. which was giving life to many villages.

Only 2% clean water is there on our earth. My estimate is that we use hardly 20% of drinkable water (for our food etc) and we waste rest 80% of remaining (clean) water for activities which never actually require clean / drinkable / soft water (where unclean / undrinkable / hard / recycled water can also be used). What the hell are we doing to the mother nature!!!

While he was Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee once said that the next big war could be fought for (clean) water and not for oil… We humans would be the biggest fools if such thing ever happens.

I love saving water and I love to design / use low cost water collection and storage items. I hate waterlogged streets after the rain while underground water level is going down and down. Why can’t we even provide some open land or make some raw pits / open ponds to collect this water and let the earth retain it. This is not a rocket science.

My efforts to use clean water and save water wastage in my house:

Till 2007 I was honestly not aware of various low cost water filters (apart from aquaguard etc). Few surprised friends suggested me to use water filter having calcium candles. I now have RO Plant with Water Filters and it drains a lot of waste (hard) water. I make sure to collect this drained water and use it in bathroom for cloth / floor washing etc.

I suggest collection and re-use of following waste water as toilet flush:

Washing m/c drainage

Wash basin / kitchen sink drainage

I don’t have my own house, still it is my pledge to install rainwater harvesting plant in my house, whenever I make it. I am yet to see anyone having such plant in any of the rented houses I lived in.

Home made rain water harvesting method

Simplest design: take all the spare big sized bottles and put big funnels on top of them and put them in the rain. They can collect a lot of rain water. Fill that water in a separate tank which can be utilized for anything except drinking / bathing etc.

Following are few of the slogans / thoughts I came up with and we all could follow:

If you can’t make it, don’t waste it…
Return as much clean water as you can back to nature, just like nature provides it to you free of cost…

This article was submitted in response to a contest announced for our book   Elixir for Zylake