Johannesburg - The wealthy are pouring good quality drinking water down the drain by filling their spa baths, having long, luxurious baths, and singing in the shower.
This is according to the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, who told Saturday Star this week that both rich and poor had to embrace the Water and Sanitation revolution by stopping such practices as using clean drinking water to dispose of human waste.
“High income earners are the ones using a lot of our drinkable water to wash their cars, water their gardens, run their (spa baths), singing songs till the end in the shower. They sit in their baths and enjoy themselves using all our drinkable water… When they dispose of the water, it’s thrown out as waste.
“You just wipe your nose and then flush (the tissue) in the toilet. That wastes so much water. We need to start diverting our water and be in a position to reuse it as irrigation.
Rainwater harvesting was also needed.
Mokonyane said she had started to harvest rainwater in her Krugersdorp home. She also had solar panels to provide green power.
“I understand the implications of brushing my teeth with running water. For all of us, it’s about changing habits.”
Mokonyane told Parliament during her budget vote this week that her department was determined to introduce low-water and no-water solutions to deliver sanitation services.
This included reducing the size of toilet cisterns, and her department was working with housing authorities. “Our methods of disposing human waste through flushing toilets that use drinking quality water are unwise and unsustainable… A decent sanitation solution does not mean a flushing, waterborne solution.”
Dry sanitation solutions must “become the reality” in low- and high-income households, Mokonyane emphasised.
“When faced with the challenges of scarcity of our resources, we need to find better ways to manage and use our resources, and desist as a country from using our drinkable surface water for our other needs.
“We’ve worked with the Water Research Commission and the CSIR… The solutions are there. This month, we’re starting to pilot a number of these solutions across the country.
“We’re a water-scarce country, our rainfall has not been good over the past three years. Climate change is a reality. We must change the way we do things.”
Her department was considering a rebate programme for consumers who retrofitted their homes to use water wisely.
“Yes, it will cost money, but the reward is you pay less for the services you are using in the long run, and you save precious water resources.”
Christine Colvin, senior manager of World Wildlife Fund SA’s freshwater programme, believed that the department’s low-flush initiative was “sensible” and “definitely the way forward”.
“We’re already using all the water we have. To do more with less is definitely the way to go,” she said.
“As the minister said, we’re not just flushing our best quality drinking water down the drain, it ends up mixing with sewage and creating other problems.”
Saturday Star