Residents get wise on water waste

From bubble wrap to stop pool water from evaporating, to showering with a bucket at your feet, Nelson Mandela Bay residents are becoming more savvy in a bid to save and reuse water.

This comes in the wake of punitive water restrictions which the city imposed last month.

Yesterday, infrastructure, engineering and energy political head Annette Lovemore welcomed the different ways people were implementing saving water measures in their homes.

“The general water consciousness is high and it is showing,” she sad.

“This is excellent and it will certainly be taken into account by the mayor when he has to make his decision on whether or not to implement stricter punitive tariffs next month.

“If awareness is achieving the results we need, we might not need to take that step. We just need every household to make additional small savings and we will be at our target usage,” Lovemore said.

However, she said the number of people trying to cut back was still too low.

“The usage by residents is looking good but it is still not quite at the level we need. But it is fast approaching that required level,” she said.

Taking a page from the Western Cape’s book – which has been experiencing tougher water restrictions sanctions for a longer period of time – Central resident Debby Timm said after a recent visit to Cape Town she had decided to start a Facebook page where people could share their ideas.

“I wanted to create a platform for people to be able to share a host of ideas so as to help others with saving water or reusing grey water. I really want to turn it into something big so that we, as a city, can become really water wise.

“We don’t have a garden or a pool because we live in a flat, but we do have a few plants out on the balcony which we water with our washing machine water.

“Grey water usage is a real great way of making use of already used water, and you even get products that you can wash your laundry with that is safe for plants as well,” Timm said.

The Facebook page, “Saving water together Eastern Cape”, has more than 60 members with images of water pipe connections from the kitchen to the garden or garden patches and 2-litre containers connected to the bottom of the gutter pipes which lets all the water fall perfectly into a drum which could be used for topping up the pool or watering dry grass.

Mercia Westraadt, of George, who is a member of the Western Cape group, said her household was doing its bit to save water.

“We are using grey water from the bath, shower and washing machine to lay a pipe connection on the grass to water the garden and save money by having a veggie patch from grey water,” Westraadt said.

Lovemore added that residents were allowed to fetch recycled effluent water from Fishwater Flats or from Cape Recipe Wastewater Treatment Works.

“This water cannot be drunk and should not be used for pools, but it can be used for gardens or for construction,” she said.