by Ágnes Juhász, Sales Coordinator at Organica Water
I bet you already know that we should drink approximately 2 liters of water per day to hydrate our bodies. But that is just a small fraction of the daily 200 – 400 liters per person consumed (depending upon local conditions and cultural norms) to bathe, brush your teeth, flush the toilet, cook dinner, wash the dishes and the laundry, clean the house, water the garden and so on.
Many societies take it for granted that when we open the tap, clean water comes out, we use it and then it “disappears” in the sink. The cleaning process before and after is invisible, therefore the general public has little understanding of where this wastewater (we prefer “used water” as it shouldn’t be wasted!) goes…It is out of sight and out of mind.
As part of the global World Water Day event (celebrated annually on March 22nd), we asked a class of 12-year-old children to draw a picture of what they think a wastewater treatment facility looks like. As we suspected, wastewater treatment was generally imagined as a “black box” with some pipes: wastewater goes in and magically turns into clean water again. But is their perception any different from the general adult public? What is your vision of what wastewater treatment looks like? Any different from the 12-year olds’ view?
If you aren’t already aware, World Water Day originated with the United Nations, and this year’s theme was ‘Water and Sustainable Development’ to spotlight areas we need to consider if we want to create the future we want. We at Organica Water believe that a sustainable future starts with education. As a contribution to World Water Day, we invited this same class of 12-year olds that provided us the drawings to visit an Organica-powered wastewater treatment facility to learn more about water use and wastewater treatment.
It was great to see how the perception of the children changed at the end of the site visit. We were glad to experience their open minds and to listen to their smart questions. We are proud of how fast they understood wastewater issues and that they started to think in a different and sustainable way. They also promised us to draw some new pictures after the visit. It is yet to come, but surely we will share it right away…
Further, it was great to see how the children changed their perception of what a wastewater treatment facility CAN look like (not what it HAS to look like). One of the key themes we work on here at Organica is cultivating a different mindset of what wastewater treatment looks & smells like…it doesn’t have to be a big grey concrete structure, that looks and smells like your worst neighborhood fears. It can look like and smell like a botanical garden, treating wastewater to high quality (even reuse) standards in a more space-efficient and energy-reducing design…As such, the facility can be part of the local community – as we say “capture local, treat local, (re)use local’.
We believe wastewater treatment should be more prevalent in the local discussion and in more people’s minds – it is a critical part of our water cycle and protecting our environment. So this group of 12-year olds have a new idea of what wastewater treatment can look like…do you?
