Individuals

Saving Water

• Fix leaks: Small household leaks can add up to gallons of water lost every day. Let's check our plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems regularly.
• Just by turning off the tap while shaving or brushing teeth, we can save as much as 16 to 24 litres of water. That could add up to more than 800 litres a month. The same is true when we wash dishes. Let's scrape our dirty dishes into the trash instead of rinsing them before loading the dishwasher.
• Taking a shower uses much less water than filling up a bathtub. A shower only uses 40 to 100 litres, while a bath takes up to 280 litres. Bucket baths save even more water.
• Plug up the sink or use a wash basin if washing dishes by hand.
• While using the dishwasher let's make sure it's fully loaded.
• Keep a pitcher of drinking water in the refrigerator instead of letting the faucet run until the water is cool. Letting our faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours.
• Thaw in the refrigerator overnight rather than using a running tap of hot water.
• Wash only full loads of laundry or use the appropriate water level or load size selection on the washing machine.
• To save money on our energy bills, let's set our washing machine to use colder water for clothes that are not extra soiled rather than hot or warm water.
• Let's sweep driveways, sidewalks, and steps rather than hosing off.
• Let's wash the car with water from a bucket, or consider using a commercial car wash that recycles water.

Protecting Water Sources

• Let's add food wastes to our compost pile instead of using the garbage disposal.
• Let's not pour hazardous waste down the drain, on the ground, or into storm sewers. This could contaminate the soil, groundwater, or nearby surface water.A number of products used at home contain hazardous or toxic substances that can contaminate ground or surface waters, such as: Motor oil, Pesticides, Leftover paints or paint cans, Mothballs, Household cleaners, medicines etc…
• Groundwater can be contaminated by poorly or untreated household wastewater, which poses dangers to drinking water and to the environment.
• Malfunctioning septic systems release bacteria, viruses, and chemicals to local aquifers and waterways. The average household septic system should be inspected at least every three years by a septic service professional. Household septic tanks are typically pumped every three to five years.

Spread the awareness

Let's propagate the information, use the TF portal and get others to join in taking action. It's one of the quickest and most effective ways to make a difference. Let's talk to our neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family to work towards stopping water wastage and to help where there is a need for water and improved sanitation. Water scarcity concerns all of us and affects the future of our children. No one can do it all alone – but we can do it together.

Governments & Policy Makers

Every country’s policy makers need to promote and support action on the following:

• Development of water safety plans.
• Improve the status of sanitation in health-care facilities.
• Supporting household water treatment and safe storage initiatives to improve the quality of drinking-water and reduce the transmission of waterborne diseases.
• Promoting safely-managed rainwater harvesting in the communities, schools and healthcare facilities.

Further Action required from all governments

• Calculate the water available: We need a better accounting of our “water balance sheet”. In many places, we don’t have any idea how current and near-term future demand matches up with the available surface and groundwater supplies. (World Resources Institute)
• Link global water use:Although high income countries are quite efficient at using water within their own country, they have a huge water footprint because of all the food and goods they import, often from very water stressed parts of the world. Government regulation or taxation could nudge behaviours onto a more sustainable path, thinking of global water economy.
• Think across sectors: Policies, thoughts, innovations and solutions towards providing access to water has to be linked with the same for water resources. We need to think harder about where the water for increasing coverage is going to come from and how we can implement sanitation services that protect water resources.
• Treat water resources better: For a long time we treated water as limitless, and the incentive structures in cities and rural areas pushed people towards unsustainable practices. Water distribution being highly subsidised by governments doesn’t help create awareness about its actual value. We must make measurable efforts to change water-use habits in a global scale.
• Develop water monitoring and regulation: Governments can provide both regulatory sideboards, such as requirements for full cost recovery on water tariffs, and incentives, such as cost-share on water reuse and rainwater harvesting systems. For developing countries (and many developed countries) this may feel like a daunting task, but governments do this sort of thing for education, energy and other sectors. It’s high time to do the same for water.
• Establish accountability mechanisms: To secure a safe water supply for low income people, any subsidies for the high income should be eliminated. With the money saved, direct subsidies can be given to the low income people who should also be encouraged to be more self-reliant (e.g. rainwater harvesting practices).
• Construct better water points: Looking at water point data in various countries, the number of boreholes and wells that are reported dry or seasonal only is shocking. In places like Sierra Leone, Liberia and Tanzania, more than 15 to 20% of water points fail in the first year after construction. Poor communities often have to contribute a great deal for a new water point, so it clearly isn’t right when they are left with a dud.
• Promote rainwater harvesting: We need to challenge the way that rainwater harvesting is thought of. Everyone knows about it, but its use and implementation is piecemeal and neither, governments, big agencies or donors push it forward.
• Secure sufficient financing: To guarantee future populations have reliable access to water and sanitation, the top priority is securing the money to ensure that systems are built and adequately maintained over the years.
• Work with communities: The sustainability of water interventions is essential for communities to actually have better opportunities for development in the future. Helping community leaders take ownership of their water solutions and transferring that to their neighbours is one of the best ways to ensure projects remain a part of people’s lives.
• Apply smart strategies: WRI’s global analysis finds that future water stress is driven far more by demand than supply. Even in areas that will experience big hydrologic impacts from climate change, unmanaged demand will be a bigger impact. That is also cause for some optimism. If we apply the smart strategies that we already know work in the urban, rural and agricultural contexts, we can reduce future conflict and secure more water for equitable development and growth.

Innovation & Industry

Invest in simple, efficient irrigation technology: Some means of beating water scarcity in agriculture, like farming close to rivers, are cheap but unsustainable. This could be prevented if there is an effort to invest in simple but efficient technologies for irrigation. This would break the vicious cycle where water scarcity leads to the invasion of marginal lands near rivers, which in turn undermines the ability of the river system to replenish its water resources, leading to further scarcity. (International Water Management Institute, South Africa)

Think beyond waste

Innovation can play a massive role in increasing consumer demand for sanitation systems. We are nearing a tipping point between advances in health and technology. Health sensors, fertilisers, biogas – unlocking these business models can change the face of sanitation.

Involve communities

It is critical that people accept the water and sanitation solutions that are installed. Even in Europe, there is great resistance to the idea of using faecal sludge on agricultural land. Involving communities in the design and choice of technology is key to ensuring that the result is what users want. One great example is from Paraguay, where communities helped to select the technology and the design of the facilities to ensure they met their values. This is a long process and requires investment in the construction and participatory processes, but considering the current low sustainability rates of many Wash [water, sanitation and hygiene] investments, it will pay off in the long term. (Stockholm International Water Institute)

Create standards for innovation

If we want to promote sanitation as a sustainable utility service, it is important to come up with more standards for technologies and services. The International Organization for Standardization is developing a new standard for non-sewer sanitation systems that kill pathogens. The standard provides guidelines for the industry to develop new technologies, and can help countries shape their policies and promote the best systems.

Keep your audience in mind

Innovation can be done in different ways but it should be focused on the key audience for the right reasons and for the right end value-add. This might be around working on aid effectiveness, scaling action in supply chains, focusing on marginalised communities, hygiene behaviour, water stewardship, capacity building or working with the private sector – a whole number of things. It can take longer but buy-in is greater in the end. (WaterAid,)