Water... There's not much I can add to the plethora of information you can find on the Web about saving water in the home - just google, and you'll find page upon page of instructions, hints, tips and techniques. Another google search asking "what is water?" will yield another stockpile of information on the properties and scientific facts of water. And ofcourse Rachel and Emma's posts on this subject over at
That Little Bit Greener, do a good job of summarising the things we can do at home to be more conscious of our use of this valuable gift from Nature. No I don't believe that having water available to us is a
right - nature doesn't care a jot for human rights. Water is a gift, and the best we can do is treat it as such.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Everything we can do to be greener boils down to MOTIVATION. We humans wouldn't do a thing without it. I don't mean the sort of motivation that is briefly encountered when we are told something that we 'know' to be "the right thing to do"... I mean the motivation which comes from deep within our psyche. The type of motivation which changes opinion into assumption and then forces us to do what we believe to be the right thing so that what we are striving to do becomes an automatic function of every day life - totally integrated, as normal as breathing, we then no longer think of the task at hand as something which is an effort, or particularly remarkable. But we have to find our own motivation, and the best way to learn is to do the research yourself.
As regular readers here may have realised, I am an animist. I do believe there is spirit in everything, and water, as one of the main forces of life, is obviously no exception. So my motivation started with exploring every aspect of the realm of water - physical, metaphysical, scientific and spiritual,
Meditate with water. No I don't mean clear your mind into a zen like status whilst humming over a tibetan singing bowl full of bottled spring water. I mean, find relationship with water. YOUR water - from the tap, from the puddle outside your house, from the dew on your grass, from right under your nose.... Think of all the things that water is to you, where does your water supply come from? How does it reach you? What does water do? What would we do without it? Why do we need it? What is it made of? What is in it? What are WE made of? What of the rain which falls so regularly on our little island here, how old is that water? Who lives in water, and who lives without it? Where is water? What of the places where there is no water, and the places where it is abundant? Don't stop at the scientific facts and figures, or the shocking realities which inform us of the millions of people who die every single day in parts of the world where there is none. Move onto the elemental lore of nature, the mythical and mystical properties of water, and the natural cycles which it is a part of. Where is the water around your home? The rivers, brooks, springs, streams, seas .... Can you feel the water? Does each source or body of water seem different? or the same? Does it change with the seasons, or the days, or the time? Just as you can talk to trees, sit by water, and speak to it - see what happens. Listen. Hold a glass of water in your cupped hands, and call to the spirits of water. You will soon feel the hum of it's energy, while little bubbles pop out from it's depths and float to the top, each bursting bubble inducing a child like wonder and delight. Just as we connect with friends and family, connection with water will change our attitude towards it.
Now extend your consciousness a little, into your shopping basket. Do you buy bottled water? Why? We live in a country where water is plentiful, where every second of every day, if we want, we can just turn a tap and out it pours, clean, fresh, life giving, drinkable water. How lucky we are!
Bottled water is my biggest water bugbear of the moment. There are many rapacious companies who, with questionable rights and even more questionable morals, buy water rights all over the world - particularly the third world, they bottle this stolen water in millions of plastic bottles, and fly it back to us in the west, while the people in the countries from where it has been robbed, die of thirst!! Scandal just isn't the word! Read
THIS article and then
this one. Bottled water is where we really need to be pulling the plug.
