(Rain) Water’s Worth Saving!
Ah, it’s raining! ….. after a glorious couple of weeks it feels more like a ‘proper’ British summer again! The plants are happy and I’m very proud that I cut the grass just before the rain started last night so everything is looking very green again! Isn’t it every gardener’s aim, to create a colourful garden? Thanks to our involvement in the Water UK, Water’s Worth Saving campaign over the past couple of years, I have become much more aware of how we use water in the garden — I don’t water the grass anymore which means I don’t have to bother cutting it much when it’s hot — it goes a bit brown but comes back quickly as soon as it rains.
I’ve also packed away the hose — you certainly value the water more if you are carrying around heavy watering cans!
The big challenge of our campaign has always been for people to understand why we need to save water in this country? It always rains right? We pay for our water and it’s up to the water companies to make sure it’s there when we turn on the tap — particularly when we need it the most — in hot weather. So why do we sometimes run out on sunny evenings? Why is it up to us to save water and really — if I have a shorter shower, is it going to make any significant difference — it’s raining for goodness sake!
The reality is we can’t just use rain water as it is. Water has to go through a process to make it safe to use in our homes. You might not intend to drink the water in your paddling pool but all the water which comes out of the tap is the good stuff — we don’t have different standards of water — so watering your plants with tap water is a bit like showering in bottled water — in fact, even having a shower is a bit like washing in bottled water! — and its not just the fact that the water itself is precious but the process it goes through creates carbon emissions which just adds to the issues of global warming which causes heatwaves and droughts which will put even more pressure on our water supply…..
We are so fortunate in this country that we feel we can take a clean water supply for granted but that’s not the case in many places in the world — and some of those places are not that far away — Spain, Greece, lots of areas in Europe already struggle to supply clean drinking water to all residents. As our summers get hotter the problem is only going to get worse and even though I don’t really care about my grandchildren having a paddling pool, I really do want them to have access to the clean water they need, in their homes.
When we pay for something to literally be ‘on tap’ it’s so easy to assume we can use as much of it as we want but we have all learnt that we need to turn off the lights….. so we need to do the same with water.
I’m going to go and check on how the buckets are filling up in the garden — it seemed to rain all night but I actually only collected enough to fill half a watering can which would take me a minute to fill to the top from the tap…. Watching it fill up with raindrops makes me realise how special it is.
