Water

Water is essential for our life form. Fresh water. We use an awful lot of it every day. You could say we use too much. But that’s not the point here. The point is, what do we do with it after use? And that’s where it all goes wrong.

All too often water, after it’s been used only once, is dumped and disposed of. In principle it goes to the sea via canals. Exit water. Not dramatic for river water, because that was going towards the sea anyway. But it is dramatic for water we pumped up form the ground, precious water reserves that took thousands of years to be built up by nature.

Of course we think “recycle” also here, as in every part of colourcash: recycle recycle recycle. And then we try to keep the cycle as short as possible. For water this means re-use, re-use re-use. The smaller the scale, the better it is.

Water catching becomes very attractive in colourcash. Gray water circuits are very economical and earn back their costs sooner than in a Black and White economy. This is obviously because prices are set up differently. Recycling is the essential criterion.

The water company pumps up our water from subterranean reserves. Long ago this water seeped in. You can’t pump up more water from below the earth than is stored in the first place. When you pump up more than is added by seepage, the balance gets disturbed. That water no longer is Green but Blue. Depending on the Blue stream this is a very disadvantageous situation, because this blue supply can run out any time. Or, the Blue supply should be stopped as soon as possible.

The other supplies, via rivers and rain water, are Green. Income. Nice! Now the trick is to keep this water Green as long as possible. Recycle, recycle, and recycle. Dumping is possible, but whereto? When the water stays in your own cycle, no problem. But when you take it elsewhere, it turned Blue.

Everybody knows bottled sparkling water. Mineral water. Very often it’s pumped up at far away sources and put into boxes or bottles, then transported by lorries to the corner shop. 500 kilometres is a normal travel distance for a bottle of water.

What do you think? Is this water still in its original cycle? I don’t think so. If nothing went wrong at the pumping up, then surely the transport messed things up royally.

An important or rather THE most important water guzzler is agriculture. How else can a cucumber stay juicy if not with water? Often a lot of water is lost by the indiscriminate spraying of water on land that doesn’t seem to have a saturation point. A little shower does more good to crops than a water cannon spouting water all day long.

When you interrupt the water cycle by irrigating the land by spraying, keep in mind that breaking this cycle also has consequences for the surroundings. The vaporized water has to go somewhere. It rises through heat. And rising air doesn’t permit rain to fall. The best way to chase away the rain is to make it rain artificially. Method and effect together are a quick way to get rid of all our fresh water reserves! One day Lake Aral was the biggest lake in the world. Now it’s a barren desert, surrounded by barren cotton plantations... If the government of the Soviet Union had learned their lesson sooner, there would still be a lake and there would still be cotton growers!

The future is called permaculture, the hands-on counterpart of colourcash, with a variety of techniques enabling water-less gardening. Water-collection is a simple way to have at least some free water. A different selection of plants or crops will make a lot of impact. Finally, mulching keeps the soil moist and cool for a long time. Good luck!