Find me something else that might help people conserve.

Water Consumption

.     At the risk of sounding like a progressive nut, here's another little ditty about social problems. Years ago I took a class in college by a save-the-earth hippie turned college professor and one of the issues we studied all those years ago was the imminent water crisis. Not one of us in that class had realized such a thing was on the horizon, and some of us walked away from the class believing the numbers had some truth to tell. I can say it made a believer out of me, but an activist I hesitate to admit, I was not. I did become more conscious of water consumption though.
.     I've been working on a bit of spring cleaning for a few years now and I'd dragged my flower boy along on one of these cleaning excursions last week to provide moral support and a spare hand. I came across the book from that class and smiled to remember the class, the hippie and I thought of the water study we did. For the past few years I've been telling my intelligent friends to invest in de-salinization plants as water will become a commodity and factories that make salt water potable will be making money, like it or not.
.     According to the reports we studied back then, the water tables have been consistently dipped into at a faster rate than "mother earth" has been able to replenish and as a result all the studies showed an imminent water crisis in the near future. Listed was a seven year projection. We are now five years into that projection and sure enough, there seems to be a bit more public awareness going around.
.     I found in my web crawling an interesting table which encourages smarter water consumption and if you check it out, you may notice something about your water "footprint" that might make you feel a little guilty too. I, for one, am not a vegitarian. More the 'carnetarian', I rarely eat anything that doesn't have a healthy serving of meat in it. Unfortunately the amount of water used in the production of market-meats is so high. Too bad because I can't go without at least a weekly helping of good old fashioned steak.
.     One thing I wonder about though is if this chart refers to salad as a store-bought head of lettuce and other veggies as part of its figures, or if it references home-grown veggies. I've always been a fan of victory gardens, kept one when I was a kid and always wanted to have a yard to plant one in. Which, by the way hon, do you think the land-lord will be ok with us planting some veggies this season? As this is the first time I've been in one "home" consistently long enough to invest the time and effort. I certainly want to utilize the proverbial foot-print for something more beneficial than growing grass that ends up being cut anyway.
.     Plant a garden. I encourage at least this. Turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth. I remember wash-basins and using that water to wash up and brush. Why don't we start teaching ourselves and those close to us to make these little changes. You can't stop big corporations from wasting so much water but the more we save now, the more we'll have in the imminent future.