Water shortage: time to face the facts

Claire McGowan thinks it’s time to stop worrying about hosepipe bans in the UK and take a look at the bigger picture.

''Some of the world’s poorest people have to walk up to 50 miles just to find safe water, or have to drink from dirty sources through sheer necessity.''

Of all the things we worry about, water probably isn’t one of them. It’s just there to be drunk, to cook our food in, to wash in and to hose down our gardens. If it ever becomes a problem in this country, it’s usually through having too much, rather than too little. However, this summer we may have to think more about the lack of water; hosepipe bans are already in force in the South West and up to a third of all water travelling from reservoirs to homes is lost from old and leaking pipes.

Of course our problems here of thirsty begonias and parched privets do not compare with Kenya, where a severe drought has decimated livestock populations, and pushed the people who depend on them into crisis. Recent news reports from this area suggest that many people are making do with around three glasses of water a day for all their drinking, cooking and washing, and this in a region of scorching 40-degree temperatures. There are even stories of children drinking their own urine to stay alive.

It’s hard to imagine here, where our biggest difficulty during a water shortage is driving a dirty car or letting a lawn go un-sprinkled. Despite our undeniable ease of access to clean water in Britain many people still refuse to drink what comes out of the tap. Instead they are swayed by advertising into paying for something they can get at home, and as a result end up carting home unnecessary plastic bottles. All these bottles help add up to the staggering 15 million that are thrown away every single day in the UK. If that’s not enough to put you off buying it from the bottle then how about the fact that the water you’re drinking may have been bottled months ago, sometimes causing lethal chemicals to leak from the plastic?

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?

Stop for a moment and think about how many bottles of water you buy per month. If you spend around a fiver on bottled water each month – easily done if you buy just one bottle a week – think what else you could buy with that money. It could go towards providing a pump for an entire village. Some of the world’s poorest people have to walk up to 50 miles just to find safe water, or have to drink from dirty sources through sheer necessity. The UN estimates that 2.3 billion people worldwide are suffering from diseases and parasites caused by contaminated water.

This summer we may be facing the fact that water isn’t an inexhaustible commodity. Several water companies have been granted licenses to install water meters, which could soon become a reality for British homes. Perhaps it’s also time to acknowledge that millions of people have no access to clean water at all, let alone clean and drinkable water from the handy tap in the kitchen. Something to think about next time you shell out £1.50 for half a litre of the stuff.