I am not in a third world country. I do not have a water shortage, but I do have a water-sense shortage – of a different kind.
I am appalled every time I see wasteful behaviors or habits. You walk to vending machine, pop in couple of dollars and out comes a bottle of water. You drink half of it. You finish lunch. You throw the bottle into the bin along with your half eaten lunch.
You have forgotten the most basic thing that you must do as a decent human being, belonging to a larger humanity who served you that bottle of water from that vending machine. Stop thinking in terms of having a large amount of money in your pocket that you happened to find a roadside or you inherited a fortune from your rich relative. Think in terms of the waste you are creating by doing just what you did – not even thinking twice about the pre and post impact of that action.
A company of a significant size was responsible to create that vending machine facility for you to use it whenever you want it, instead of waiting till you get home to drink water or carry a bottle all the time with you.
Another construction company was responsible for installing that vending machine where you found it.
An utility company was responsible to provide the needed power to run that vending machine to keep your bottle of water cold.
A water supply company was responsible for putting that bottle of water for you to get it when you wanted it.
More importantly, it costed 22 liters of water to produce that bottle of water for you have it in a pristine condition that you found it.
The coins or notes you used to get that bottle of water was totally a different matter altogether.
By discarding that water, you have done a great injustice to many of these people who were diligent in getting that water you. So please, before discarding that bottle of water, please think of these who made it possible for you have it.
These wasteful habits are rampant not just near a vending machine, but in offices too.
Even when a cooler is available for office use, staff tend to pick up a bottle of water from the fridge that might have been kept for use for its customers or perhaps in an event of emergency. Cooler ignored, bottles consumed – sometimes half or most of it left near the counters that are usually get thrown away by the cleaners at the end of the day.
If only we could keep playing videos near these vending machines and kitchen facilities in the offices that shows how people in other places struggle to get water to meet their basis needs, we may have a chance to change these wasteful habits or make some inroads in educating the need of not only protecting the valuable resource, but also respect the usage of water.