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My Week Without Water


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27 responses // My Week Without Water

  • People take water for granted so much in this country. My challenge wasn't as inconvenient as yours was. However, last year I took the money I would spend daily on drinks in plastic bottles for a month and donated it to Water Partners International which is another organization that helps people around the world have water pumps and sanitation. I had over 100.00 dollars and it felt great to know it was going to help bring people clean water. I have already lessened my water footprint very much, and as you illustrated it is hard to get by when you are so used to thinking water is limitless. As you also stated here, it is a travesty that 40% of people in our world in the 21st Century have no access to a simple toilet. Over 1 billion people also lack access to potable water for life as well. Awareness is the first step to change, so thank you so much for doing this pod.
    JanforGore
  • it seems silly to me that we can be so elitist with our drinking water, paying for designer bottled water when plain tap water is truly one of societies great luxuries.
    hollissp
  • This is an excellent piece of reporting. You are absolutely correct about the lack of water in so many poverty stricken areas. In my research on malnutrition, the absence of fresh water only compounds the immense problem as a cereal made with grains, which is all the poor can afford in parts of Africa, needs to be mixed with water to be eaten.
    The numbers are staggering and I thank you for getting the word out. We are all so spoiled!
    julsie6789
  • I don't know what I would do without good drinking water. That's all I drink through 85% of day. And the fact that so many people in other countries throw their bodily waist right out side of their homes is alarming to me. What con be done to help those in need of healthy environments?
    TheNome
  • I would've liked to hear more of what you were feeling on a day to day basis. I'm sure you had to come up with some pretty creative ways of doing things in order to only use 10 liters and it would be interesting to see what you did differently, besides not flushing the toilet or plugging the sink.
    squidteeth
  • The video clip humbles me. My heart weeps for our nation's waste of water and for the suffering of millions. I am more energized than ever before to find ways to reclaim "grey" water and to live a much more sustainable life. Even though we recycle, drive less, catch warming shower water and use it on plants etc.....there is so much more to do.

    Thank you for teaching us all.
    MeganMcKenzie
  • do you know that water, the water in a river,
    has taken every biological form,a flower,
    a cloud , a rain drop,
    a snow flake,a river,
    any river.

    thats big, that's the world,

    the world we need to change

    every drop....!!!!!!


    stop by any time

    gent jim
    gentjim
  • Hi, thank you all for your kind comments. I spent a long time making this pod (even though the experiment was only a week long). Someone mentioned it would have been nice to know more what my feelings were - in fact, my original version of this pod is about 6 minutes long and includes more of those things, but my pod was re-edited by Current staff.
    Things that I did during the experiment included recycling my dish water and water used in cooking to flush the toilet, very carefully measuring water when making tea and cooking, not leaving the tap on while brushing my teeth and washing my face / hands (actually not using the tap at all, apart from a few mistakes!) and also not showering for a week...
    It did humble me to try and live on such a small amount of water and has made me change certain things about my water consumption permanently.
    missp
  • Water is Life
    worldbefree
  • yes it is,is it not beautiful.???
    gentjim
  • Yes it is beautiful. Water is the essence of our souls. It is alive, and we need to stop taking it for granted.
    http://water-is-life.blogspot.com.
    JanforGore
  • Really well done pod - very enlightening, crisp and concise- hopefully you'll do a follow up!
    nwintroub
  • When I was growing up in Okinawa, Japan... many years we were on "water rationing" for many months at a time.

    This meant that the water was totally turned off every other day.
    As in the government turned the water off, nothing flowed from any faucet.

    We were lucky and had a plastic trash can in the hall full of water, and a bucket so we could flush the toilet. With a family of 6, ya need that.

    I often washed my hair in the water that ran off the roof. Those days I felt lucky to get the extra water for my hair.

    When we did shower, we did this:
    Turn water on, get wet. Turn water off. Shampoo, wash with soap, shave, etc.. Turn water on, rinse. Turn water off. Shower done.

    It was a luxury if to use water for trivial things.
    Washing of clothes and dishes waited. Banned activities, included the use of water outside basically... i.e. washing cars, watering plants or grass.

    We did get rain, but not enough to put us off rationing.
    arcticspirit
  • Very interesting experiment.
    It's nice to see how you would deal with just 10 litres a day.
    As she said, this just gives you a shallow insight in how it is to live with such a small amount of the resource, as the transportation time etc. is irrelevant.

    Good pod! :)
    Tommyjolly
  • excellent pod! it's amazing how much water it's wasted in the US...not a lot of people try to save water in this country although i must say there is not a lot of education on the subject.

    SAVE WATER!!! take care of our planet...
    paparazzotv
  • wow great pod. A lot of us Americans don't understand how much people in poverty stricken nations have to go through daily for water to live. My folks are from Pakistan and they tell me how difficult it was and still is, to get water back home. They would walk for miles, carrying heavy loads for the whole family and the water was still not really clean or filtered to be considered healthy enough to drink. Water is nourishment and a major element for survival for any organism.
    frankyk
  • wonderful work. the pod didnt have any music but still moved briskly and was poignant. would love to see you do more pods of this sort...pods that highlight some critical world issue but is made personal by some kind of challenge...maybe something on the amount of calories, or electricity or money....It would have also been nice if the pod pointed to a website or project that the viewer could participate in.
    BooksBrown
  • The question is, should every citizen of the world have access to potable water? In my humble opinion, I think that everyone should have the right to life, and water is the beginning. I think with the disparity of wealth becoming greater in the world that water is not as important as corporate profits.
    CaptB
  • If you look back about 5 to 6 generations in the United States, you'll see a significant portion of the population living without municipal (tap) water, go back to the 1700s and it was nearly everyone. Same goes for flush toilets.

    If you don't have a flowing tap, you tend to be much more frugal with your water usage. If the whole society doesn't have tap water, the demand to wash clothes (and selves) daily drops off rather quickly.

    Yes, it's nice to be able to walk in a crowd of thousands without being knocked over by BO, but London, Paris, Shanghai and all the other major cities of the 18th century managed to flourish (by those days' standards) without today's level of pit scrubbing.

    It's amazing how quickly people have forgotten what a recent luxury tap water is.
    JoeMerchant
  • You shouldn't insult the people who live under those conditions by pretending to like them when you have the privilege of civilization. It's not like their lives will suddenly become any better now that a single person understands how difficult it is to live under a limited supply of water. That's why it's the responsibility of modern civilization to expand as quickly as possible, to start providing some of our benefits to the people who don't have them. If that means keeping up global warming and melting the icecaps, so be it; it should essentially triple our supply of fresh water, anyway.
    TryThisOn
  • It makes you wonder why some parts of the world are developed and others aren't. Why could some societies design and build and use running water systems so long ago while others haven't?
    damnneargenius
    1 response to this
  • interesting. it's amazing how much we really over look in a privileged nation.
    ashgallagher
  • great work! daunting, poignant, and precise. keep it up please.
    armkaleka
  • What an important experiment. I wish everyone in the first world could see this and try it for themselves. Thank you for raising my own awareness.
    mmengel
  • I love this. It really makes me lean back and think about how much water we waste all the time....
    wisher40
  • Great Pod, Thanks! Great voice on narration, you sure have a great future in broadcast.
    stopnoise

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