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Wednesday 15 April 2015

[Sponsored post] PUB: Water conservation.

Hi everybody! (: I've been terribly busy these past few weeks from school and it has not been easy honestly. I'm still trying to adjust to these new changes in my life and I do hope things will get smoother as I go on! Keeping the optimistic attitude up heh -flex muscles!-.

Anyway, I'm gonna be blogging about a topic which everyone uses/comes into contact with every day and that is:

Water! 

I remember the times where my grandmother would remind me and my sisters that we are incredibly lucky to be living in a time where clean water can be assessed so conveniently. So, where does our water come from?

Singapore has four sources of water supply and they are:
1. Local catchment water (e.g. our reservoirs)
2. Imported water (from Malaysia)
3. NEWater (reclaimed water)
4. Desalinated water (seawater reverse-osmosis to obtain water)

Also, I had the opportunity last June to attend a trail walk on the Lorong Halus Waterway and how this water catchment area has it's water collected and purified. It was really informative and I enjoyed it with the boyfriend! (: Here's some pictures of the reservoir area which I snapped:




However, having an adequate supply of water is only half of the water equation because it is equally important to manage the water demand and how we use our water.

Over the years, the water conservation plan by Singapore's national water agency, PUB, which encourages customers to use water wisely has brought down Singapore's per capita domestic water consumption from 165 litres per day in 2003 to the current 150.4 litres!

And what they are currently targeting is to lower it to 147 litres by 2020 and to 140 litres by 2030.

This can definitely be reached if everyone adopts good water saving habits I feel (:

"Ah Gong says..." PUB TV commercial on water conservation

Here's PUB's 2015 commercial on water conservation which I felt was rather well-made and it reminded me of my own grandparents telling me to rinse my mouth with a cup when I'm brushing my teeth in the morning as a child (':

Hence, I'll like to share about some handy water-saving tips which we can all practise at home and even in our schools or workplaces (: But firstly, let us look at what areas does water consumption go to.

Breakdown of water use in a typical Singapore household (from http://www.pub.gov.sg/conserve/Households/Pages/Watersavinghabits.aspx)

You'll see that most of the water use goes to showering, kitchen use and for laundry and there are actually quite a few tips and ways to conserve water in these areas.

When using the bathroom or toilet, we can:
1. Take shorter showers
2. Turn off the shower tap when soaping or shampooing
3. Use a cup or tumbler when rinsing your mouth
4. Use the reduced flush button for liquid waste (for dual flushing systems)

When doing laundry, we can:
1. Run the washing machine only on a full load
2. Collect rinse water from the washing machine for flushing the toilet or mopping the floor.

Personally for my family, when we are cooking, we would wash food items (e.g. vegetables etc) in a small container of water instead of running them under the tap. When washing dishes, we would also be sure to switch off the tap when you are soaping the dirty dishes too (: 

Here's a commercial about washing dishes by PUB which I thought was pretty funny too! 


And my mum would also reuse the water we used to mop the floor to wash the floors outside our flat area to ensure that the soapy water doesn't go to waste either (:

Also, here's a look at PUB's mascot, Water Wally in one of his cute cartoon videos! More videos can be found on Youtube as well (:


Thank you for reading this post! I'm greatly thankful for Singapore's clean water which can be so easily assessed and used. I do hope it has been informative and useful for everyone about the importance of water conservation and how we can all make a difference through our everyday actions! (:

More information can also be found at http://www.pub.gov.sg/conserve (: 

Love, 
Jo