Vir Sanghvi on Bottled Water

Vir Sanghvi writes in LiveMint about the idiocy of bottled water. Fortunately, Bangalore seems to be an exception inasmuch that most restaurants do have water filters and I've seen most people trust these and ask for "regular, not bottled".

The shipping part is very irksome - for water more so.

Water water airywhere!

Aqua Sciences, Inc. courtesy this.


I guess its already time for desperate measures like these. Qn: what impact does "sucking" moisture out of air have, assuming this becomes as widespread as borewells did? That must've started off along similar lines.

Scarier than you can imagine right now

Life, Liberty, Water - CommonDreams.org

If the governments are "actively" worried, its obviously a lot closer than seems at first glance. And, as someone commented in the discussion of the above article, this is all for a resource thats essentially renewable.

We're really really screwing up.

"Virtual Water" - true ?

Everything You Know About Water Conservation Is Wrong | Environmental Policy | DISCOVER Magazine


If this is indeed true, then techniques like drip irrigation and rural RWH will be way more impactful in the larger context. Of course, there's the whole other issue of concentrated pockets of populations - urban - consuming more than locally available to their geographical area. That surely is something rainwater harvesting addresses.

Small big step towards plastic degradation?

TheRecord.com - CanadaWorld - WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags

Sounds simplistic, but I'm sure a lot of "wow" stuff gets overlooked for similar reasons. While there is some cynicism, am staying positive on this till there is definitive negative news. If true, this guy should get the biggest VC funding to start his company around this idea - this will do us all a huge favour - way more important than anything else we've "invented" in the last couple of decades.

Great leap forward

BWSSB to recycle water

We have a recyclable water problem in our area we're all trying to solve. Hope the BWSSB wakes up to this at a wider connected scale, and not just as an isolated project. Great step, nevertheless.

Great Message in a kids book

Found this as I was reading my daughter a story. Rain, downpipes, collection. Nice, quiet message in a book (from "Skiddle-de-daddle - A first book of Noises" - My Wonderful WORDBOX)

The growth story and h2o

Water Scarcity Threatens China's Future - Environment - New York Times

I guess this is true of many Indian cities too. Huge suburbs in Bangalore have no water connections - they either sink their own borewells or get the water from suppliers who do that - all of this leading to rapid depletion of groundwater.

Whats the solution ? Official water supply agencies can handle only so much growth, and are hard pressed to generate enough water for current demand levels itself.

Recharge ? Its a solution that may have no immediate benefit for those doing the spending - but would lead to sustainable groundwater if done by every house, every apartment. Tough ask - who's to implement and monitor this ?

Hurtling down a cliff....

Indian rivers heading for disaster- Hindustan Times

The "cost" of not being able to treat all the sewage has to be higher than treating it. No rivers is a very scary scenario to imagine.

CO2 -> flooding. New variable

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate flooding risk 'misjudged'

Apparently, leaves reduce the stomata size with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere - and hence release less water into the air. Lesser groundwater gets pumped into the air this way, and with a severe rain - this can cause more flooding since the ground's closer to saturation already.

But is this an isolated cause-effect relationship ? Aren't there so many more factors in play ?

• there just are fewer trees
• groundwater's getting pumped out pretty fast on most of the planet
  
• the rains themselves are more severe (and if the trees releasing less water is a major enough amount, won't the rains reduce too?)
• This is likely to be a localized cause-effect, depending on soil composition, tree cover. Is this significant enough relative to the concreting/paving of large urban spaces ?
  

Of course, this may have an impact, but one gets the sense that this may be a little bit of barking up the wrong tree :)

Think before you dump

Daily Dump - Compost at Home

Am not clear what happens to the compost yet - but sounds like a plan. If the garbage output of the city reduced by even 50%, it would solve a huge problem! Also, as a byproduct very rich topsoil might really improve yield. How does it get to those who need great topsoil, without being infinitely expensive ? No clue. Or is it sold in "retail size" packets ? Lotsa questions....

Recycled by BWSSB!

Deccan Herald - Thirsty Bangalore to get recycled water

This is both very encouraging, as well as a little scary. After all, BWSSB does only a just-about-ok job of treating relatively cleaner river water. Recycling is a great idea - especially at only 5% wastage - but running it efficiently is way more critical now, and way bigger a challenge for a governmental org.

Thinking outside the bottle

Kick The Bottled-Water HabitIt’s Not Just Daft, It’s Decadent. And Tap is Often Better. - CommonDreams.org

Wow. Of course, the comparison doesn't really hold in a place like India, where tap water is by and large unpotable. Of course, the ready availability of bottled/canned water may be a reason there's not enough of an outcry for improving tapwater quality.

Greener computing

techlogg.com - Five simple ways to save electricity with your computer

Greener = less unGreen, in this case.

Oh Well

The Daily Independent - News

Indiscriminate sinking of borewells has depleted the water table all over India too. As the article hint, the well owners must be encouraged to keep the wells recharged. Here's a few ideas:

• Have well ? Get disconnected from the grid, and get massive breaks on property taxes etc


• Have well AND are on the grid ? Pay higher unit rates for water, or have it rationed

Of course, nothing works better than an aware audience, but a few sticks and carrots go a long way in encouraging that awarenes.

Conservation and the State

But whats the better route - local level micro-projects, or State sponsored mega ones ? I have little to back this up, but my intuition would go with the former. Yes some of the latter is needed since there are areas where there isn't any water to be conserved or harvested, and the state can help at that scale. But usually, the issues are local, and scale only adds cost, feasibility and management problems to what have, and should have been, grassroots level skills.

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WaterBattle - everywhere

The Daily Independent - News

The focus, somehow, has to be on use less, not get more . If most of Karnataka and TN had been using water optimally for agriculture, and especially in the cities, the Cauvery might've sufficed. There's lots of rains, even flooding, at least once a year. And we keep looking at that one river, essentially fed by some of that rain in Kodagu, for all of our water.

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Loktak Lake : the killer weed

Rapid weed-growth choking largest freshwater lake of northeast India

One sees this issue with numerous lakes around Bangalore too - hyacinth here.

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Conservation, Business, Common Sense

Water, the Next Clean Tech Darling? - 2007-07-18 12:21:56 | Venture Capital News

Its probably one of the more satisfying and useful jobs in the world :) Water sit atop food, economic, social, cultural, survival issues, and its no surprise its demand vs supply drives a huge economy around it.

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Main Stream - no pun intended

http://www.indiawaterportal.org/

There are a lot of orgs out there doing good stuff. But somehow, to the major junta this is more of a coffe/cocktail conversation. Not really mainstream.

Therein lies a huge challenge. And water's kind of the tiger for ecological consciousness - a lot many other things follow.