Sharjah
According to the US-based Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only two per cent of the Earth’s water is fresh water and 97 per cent is salty. Usually when anyone starts talking about going green or general sustainability, the easiest effort is to reduce consumption and since clean water is a limited resource, it should be our priority. A person can survive about a month without food, but only about five days without water, as stated in an article published by livescience.com.
I set out to collect empty plastic bottles for recycling from a few restaurants in Dubai as part of my summer neighbourhood recycling efforts, and I was thoroughly shocked at the amount of water wasted by people. Most of the bottles in my recycling bag were almost half filled with water.
Water is automatically delivered to your table by the waiting staff in many places and restaurants make a significant profit on the sale of bottled water. At the end of the meal, it is possible that your bottle is still not empty. The restaurant cannot reuse the water for another customer or for other purposes due to hygienic reasons and so are forced to discard it.
The waiters do not have the time to empty the water before discarding the bottle and on my request, they just segregate the bottles for me in bags, which are kept ready for collection.
The water in those bottles could easily be collected in a bucket and used for various purposes, such as washing your car. The recycling agency only requires empty bottles from us. We need to manage the resources wisely and conserve water for the future. We must not ignore the power of even modest individual actions and work towards raising awareness of the value and scarcity of water. Small changes in behaviour in the direction of efficient water usage would be great for the environment. I urge people to take the water bottle away when visiting a restaurant.
— The reader is a pupil based in Sharjah.
Be a community reporter. Tell us what’s happening in your community. Send us your videos and pictures to our Facebook page or at readers@gulfnews.com
