You never know the worth of water until the well runs dry.
In the world, especially in Pakistan, water is scarce. According to a UN report in 2025, there would be near to no water in Pakistan and when waters run dry, people can’t get enough to drink, wash, or feed crops and economic decline may occur. Also, inadequate sanitation is a problem for 2.4 billion people and can lead to deadly diseases. People are not paying much attention to this emerging issue which has worsened because of COVID 19 (more water is being used now for washing hands). We as a team are going to start an awareness campaign to tell people about the importance of the said issue in megacities where we waste it like a free crop.
We are a team of 7 and we have divided our work among us i.e. Hamza and Talha will work on creating posts and eBook, Umar, Tashifa, and Fatima will provide us with content for eBook and other content for creating posts, Irfan will help us with creating Urdu content, and Izzah will take care of marketing activities and also with the creation of posts presentations, videography and photography. Other than this we divide tasks according to the situation too. We have created our presence on digital platforms in the two weeks plus we are working on an eBook and most importantly our initial survey. We are going to target college and university students for this purpose. We are going to ask our Amal Prep Fellow’s fellows to help us with this. Online webinars, live sessions, and visual presentations will also be created. We will educate them about how they could save water. Following are some of the ways.
- These days because of COVID 19 we wash our hands more frequently and thus waste water by not turning off the tap for 20 seconds or for any period of time for which we wash our hands and it is very alarming.
- In most of our homes, we have maids and they literally do not care while washing dishes or clothes that the tap is running and they are wasting an immense amount of water, this requires our attention.
- Always use full loads in your washing machine and dishwasher — this cuts out unnecessary washes in between.
- Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth — this can save 6 litres of water per minute.
- Place a cistern displacement device in your toilet cistern to reduce the volume of water used in each flush. You can get one of these from your water provider.
- Take a shorter shower. Showers can use anything between 6 and 45 litres per minute. Consider getting an aerated shower head, which combines water and air, or inserting a regulator in your shower, which puts an upper limit on flow rates and also provides a softer showering experience.
- Fix a dripping tap. A dripping tap can waste 15 litres of water a day, or 5,500 litres of water a year.
- Install a water butt to your drainpipe and use it to water your plants, clean your car and wash your windows. A water butt can collect around 5,000 litres a year.
- Water your garden with a watering can rather than a hosepipe. A hosepipe can use as much as 1,000 litres of water an hour. Mulching your plants (with bark chippings, heavy compost, or straw) and watering in the early morning and late afternoon will reduce evaporation and also save water.
- Fill a jug with tap water and place this in your fridge. This will mean you do not have to leave the cold tap running for the water to run cold before you fill your glass.
- Invest in water-efficient goods when you need to replace household products. You can now get water-efficient showerheads, taps, toilets, washing machines, dishwashers, and many other water-saving products.
We have gained more than 130 likes on our Facebook page already and we aim at doing our initial survey which will be completing almost 100 to 150 participants. We will keep a record of them and after our presentations, we will request them to again tell us what they feel and run another survey. We are also planning to ask the participants to convey our message and will provide them with our eBook which we will do too to educate our children about the importance of water and how they can save it. We will use Quranic verses too to emphasize on the importance of water and some stories which are related to this topic too. We are hoping that we will be able to contribute to this cause which is of immense importance especially when during the COVID 19 we are using/wasting more water.
