We have all embraced the new way of living with our current water situation. In fact, I wonder whether any of us will ever be able to go back to having a long hot shower. Thanks to the awareness of our children’s home environments our task at school has been an easy transition.
We have cut our daily water usage down from an average of 1700l to 450l to currently 250l by implementing the following:
Sanitary:
- Rain water and greywater being used for flushing
- A “stokkie” system in the toilets for Primary School to ensure toilets get flushed less but regularly to avoid the nasty smells
- Loo paper bins provided
- Waterless hand sanitation
- Gravity feed greywater systems to be installed very soon
Drinking water:
- Thank you parents for sending this to school!
Daily use water:
- We use rain water for our painting water and other activities
- Wash basins outside our classrooms for washing hands
Kitchen and cleaning:
- We use rainwater for cleaning, and thereafter re-use it as greywater
For the future:
We have got 3 x 700l grey water tanks, one is already half-full outside Class 3, ready to use for their Gardening main lesson, one for Leigh’s Toddler class and the other will be our mobile fire fighting tank, living on a trailer.
Our Gravity feed 2500l tank will be installed this week – for the Primary School toilet block and one more tank for the Pre-school.
Our brand new 1000l tank will be for drinking water only, filled with beautiful sustainably sourced spring water provided by the City.
Our tanks are all colour coded. Once we start using them exclusively, all our children will be 100% clear on which tanks are for what use.
We are still striving to harvest as much rain water as possible so if you have any gutters laying around please let me know.
Thank you for your support, and please have a look at these very useful articles, just click on the links.
Its time to prepare for Day Zero
Getting to grips with groundwater
How to secure safe drinking water
Toilets
The power of pulling together
Live the 50 litre Life
Stefanie Roux, School Coordinator
“Water is fluid soft and yielding
But water will wear away any rock
Which is rigid and cannot yield.
It’s a rule, whatever is fluid soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
What is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu