The major problem is that there is no joined up thinking, and people in Britain have been used to having as much water as they want. Now ,I am from Yorkshire, and have lived all over Britain and abroad and travelled a great deal. When I was a child, there were few homes with central heating, and if you had a washing machine at that time, it would have an electric mangle on it if you were lucky. You had to put in effort to do the washing etc etc, so there was no wearing something for one day and then putting it in the wash. You were clean yourself and your clothes but not this constant use of washing machines as happens now. Another area is that now there are people with dishwashers, which uses much more water than washing up by hand. With a family we washed up after the meal, but as now I am a widow and live alone, I stack up washing up, and do it once a day. I have a bowl of clean rinsing water, and that is then put into the bucket to go onto the garden. The wasting of water , where you see people using drinking water in hoses , being used to wash cars and left with water running away.
But the big thing mentally is to get people to see that whatever they can do, may be very little , but if we all contributed it would make a difference. My water is on a meter, but I do not want to waste any because it is the right thing to do. Yet whilst water companies exhort us to save water, they have not followed up breaks and leaks quickly. I have personally seen a leak along the road, rang the water company, but no one came to do anything for at least 3 days.
I have lived in Syria, Portugal and Sweden amongst other places. If we had joined up thinking , instead of constantly being surprised by the weather and making minimum efforts too late, there is an overall plan that would definitely help in the future. Firstly building companies say they cant afford to do this or that or they wont be able to sell housing. If the law insisted that any new building would not get planning permission unless they adhered to best practise, then maybe the firms would spend more time working out ways to do a good job, rather than how they could wriggle out of doing a good job.
Now if any houses built now, had to be built to the best insulation possible, with solar panels where possible. The windows should be real double or triple glazing. In Sweden good glazing with space between the two glass parts, not only improves on insulation , but also makes a great deal of difference to noise levels., which when houses are so close to each other is something that is not considered and is a very useful thing which people do not even take into consideration. In Syria and Portugal, we had a simple switch on the tap levels so that no water was wasted, but all water used to clean vegetables or rinse water, could then be sent straight to the water butt. All downpipes should have a water butt connection automatically. These are one off expenses to produce useful, practical ways of diminishing the waste of resources etc. I am talking about doing this 50 years ago, it is not something that has just occurred. A very good wooden built bungalow near to Stockholm that I was staying in in January at far lower temperatures than here, and it was heated by one fan heater, as the heat was not lost by sensible use of things.
To see that a director of Yorkshire water was going to claim a bonus, when the amount of appalling decisions, leaks not sorted, no sensible planning for what was needed, no new reservoirs built etc., absolutely infuriates sensible people , who are doing their best , but even more that the sewage pollution has been allowed to carry on , where the water companies think they can get away with anything. Obviously for a genuine emergency they would have to be allowed the very occasional discharge, but they have cynically and deliberately carried on polluting our waterways, and why are they allowed to selcheck the water quality. Well they have picked the wrong group of people to try and con round here, and we have people who are taking samples all along the rivers, and getting together to see that they dont get away with it, nor dragging their feet. I do not always think that social media is used in the best way possible. However this is very useful for this situation. We get together, report things immediately etc.
What is difficult to do is to persuade people that everyone should do the best they could to save water, because when we hear about leaks not dealt with, can let people say well if you are not saving water , why should I bother. We must do everything we can to save water anyway, and not become complasaint . So it all goes together, that we make sensible decisions to improve how we used all sorts of resources. I do practise what I preach, and in my last home I had a garden on three levels . So I had water butts on each level, ran water from gutters on the greenhouse and did everything I could to save water. I had no long hose, or water sprinklers put in, but taking care of the water butts, and still not wasting water, it worked well. I had a victoria plum tree and that and my precious 100 different snowdrops had priority. In that house I had a shower over the bath,not a walk in, and in the summer when needing to save water, I used to put the plug in, not to waste the water, and then siphoned it out of the window to use for watering pots.
It is a great shame that there is this attitude of sensationization of the news, instead of giving good ideas to improve situations. To constantly repeat the same things over and over on the news etc, and warning how much more expensive food will be in the winter etc, A good thing is reminding people not to use barbacues , but why are there still brainless , selfish people, who knowing the state of the land are prepared to throw glass bottles from a car, or a cigarette out of the window, not even looking to see that it is out. Well I know I have been having a rant, but the fact that we have known how to improve matters for years, and yet made no effort to build more reservoirs etc etc.
I was very grateful that we had one little shower the day before yesterday, and it is uplifting to see how even that has perked some of the garden up. My hoarded water is firstly to keep a honeysuckle growing, and has been worth all the effort, only watering it late at night etc, and have been rewarded but the beautiful smell of the flowers to cheer me.
As a driver I also think that every car at this time of year, should have clean windscreens and number plates, but other than that, a dirty car shows a sensible person. At this time of fires and needs for water, to see people still cleaning cars , using drinking water is appalling, and selfish. As a keen gardener, I also see people putting little amounts of water on every day. I do my best to educate people and explain that saved washing up water is fine for established plans etc, and that it is far better to give them a very good soak twice a week . If you do that , the roots go down into the earth and do better, putting miniscule drops on only encourages roots to come up rather than down. Your grass is very tough, it may look as though it is dead etc , but if you have only a minimum of water, give it to your border and let the grass take care of itself, it will come back. If you have plants in pots, group them together in the shade if you can, and put together those plants that need to have rain water not tap water, and I would encourage you to think which plants are very precious to you and better to keep those plants going, rather than spread a little over too many things.
No doubt I am teaching many intelligent grandparents to suck eggs, but at the end of the day, my feeling is that I have to look in the mirror , and say that in my small way , I did my best not to waste resources in my life, and hope that I can look at my grandson and think that I have not made life more difficult for him. If we all can just do what we can, help each other and not let poor practise and waste to provide more money for the few be condoned, then we are on the right track.The constant shock horror headlines on news and in papers, can make people feel that there is nothing they can do to change anything. Well all those little good habits ARE worthwhile, and every leak sorted and water saved is good and we should be thinking how our experiences this year can lead us on to other ways to save more in the future.
