Pesticides and Water

December 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment

pineapple plantation
I came across this news that 2 of Davao’s watersheds are found to be contaminated with pesticides. They are the Talamo-Lapidas and Panigan Tamugan watersheds. These are 2 dams where the people of Davao get their tap water from.

Davao prides itself as a big exporter of fruits. It has huge tracts of pineapple, mango, papaya and banana plantations. The fruit export industry in the city gives a lot of jobs to the locals and big money for the government in the form of taxes.

But there is a negative effect to these developments. The study reports that the pesticides that were found in the watersheds are from the use of pesticides in the fruit plantations.

The pesticides are dissolved in rain water and seeped down to the ground water which runs off to the watersheds. What’s worse is that they found out that the pesticides content in the watersheds contain chemicals banned by the government.

What can we do with the pesticides? If the fruit growers in Davao will not use pesticides, can they still produce export-quality fruits? But if they continue to use pesticides, how many years before the water resources in Davao become completely contaminated with pesticides?

We need to take care of our environment mainly because if we don’t, then our health is at stake. This is happening already. Just consider how many people in the 1900’s died of cancer?

It is only now that people die left and right because of cancer. One reason is that today, there are more chemicals that we put into our bodies everyday. Today almost everything that we get in contact with has chemicals.

One of them may be coming out of our faucets or showers. Pesticides and water contamination are two big problems that we need to find solutions for. Now.

Filed Under: Conservation, Green Homes, Pollution, Toxic Wastes, Water Resources Tagged With: ,

Simple Ways to Save Water in the Bathroom

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

More Tips on How to Save Water in the Bathroom

tabo

In my last post, I focused on how much water we can save if we just turn off the faucet while brushing our teeth. In this post, I will give you more tips on how to save water and money in the bathroom.

1. Use pail and “tabo” instead of shower or bath tub. Filipinos’ use of dipper is actually a water efficient technique. You can control the amount of water to pour on your body while you are taking a bath when you use a tabo or dipper.

2. Avoid taking long showers. You don’t have to stay under the shower for 30 minutes. One minute of shower uses at least half a gallon of water. If you take a bath for more than 10 minutes, that’s 10 gallons of water wasted every day. If you are using pail and tabo, use only the water that you really need for your daily bath.

3. Turn off the shower while you are soaping or shampooing.

4. While shaving, don’t clean your razor on running water from the sink faucet. Use tabo to clean your razor or plug the drain so that you’ll have water stored in the sink.

5. Use recycled water when taking a bath. During summer when there is scarcity of water, there are many Philippine households who store water whenever there is rain. Drums and pails are used to collect rain water. We can do this all year round, not just during summer. The collected rain water can be used in the bathroom.

I’m sure there are many other ways you can think of to save on your water consumption. If we conserve water today, we will have more storage of water in our dams when the El Nino or the summer season comes.

Filed Under: Everyday Green, Green Homes, Water Conservation Tagged With: ,

Water Efficient Toilet: Saving water flush after flush

November 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

water efficient toilet
New toilets don’t have any problems with water efficiency. All toilets that are manufactured today are low flush, meaning they need only a few liters of water to flush down our urine or poop. But what will you do if you have an old toilet? Replacing it with a low-flush toilet can be costly. What can you do to reduce the water your old toilet is using?

Every time you flush, at least 6 liters of clean water is used. If you are using an old toilet, you can be using at most 4 gallons of water every flush. That’s clean water. How to save water? It’s simple. Flush only when you need to. Flush when the odor in the bathroom is unbearable. Flush after you pooped of course. But you don’t need to flush the toilet when you threw a tissue in it or if your urine is not yellowish or not smelly.

For those who have older toilets, you can reduce the quantity of water in the tank by displacing it. All you have to do is place a half-a-gallon plastic container filled with pebbles inside the tank. This way the tank will be filled with half the quantity of water as when there’s no displacement. This will be a water efficient toilet.

For most older models of toilets, this is effective. But there are others that don’t flush out all the urine or poop with a smaller amount of water. If this is the case, then it is time to upgrade to a low-flush toilet. It is costly but if you think about the savings that you will have in your water bill for years and years to come, it’s worth it.

If the water in your toilet tank is leaking, you are wasting hundreds of gallons of water every week. How to know if your toilet is leaking? Just drop some food color to the water inside the tank. Check if the water inside the bowl is colored after a few minutes. If it does, your toilet is leaking and you need to call your plumber.

I don’t know how much water is used for the toilet flushing in the Philippines but I read that almost 5 billion gallons of water is used for the flushing of toilets in the US. If the Philippines have 50 million toilets and each toilet is used 5 or more times every day, we can save a LOT if we just make sure we have water efficient toilets.

Filed Under: Everyday Green, Green Homes, Water Conservation Tagged With:

Greening our Kitchens

October 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Among all the areas of our homes, our kitchens have the most number of appliances. We have the refrigerator, electric stove, water dispenser, oven toaster, microwave oven, and coffee maker. Many people today who are going green in their kitchens by buying green appliances. Green appliances are simply those appliances that meet the minimum energy conservation requirements set by the government. You’ll know they are green appliances when they have stickers on them with the words “energy-saving” or “eco-friendly”.

Why do people buy green appliances for their kitchen?

A. Because green appliances have more modern look than their old appliances
B. Because it saves money.
C. Because it saves the environment.
D. All of the above

Answer: Letter C. Many people today buy green appliances primarily because they are environment-friendly and they don’t use up a lot of energy. Also, green appliances look sleeker for modern homes than the old appliances.

How do save money with green appliances?

A. You don’t get to use them often because they are expensive.
B. They save you in electrical bills.
C. Green appliances are made from plants.

Answer: Letter B. Even if green appliances cost higher than ordinary appliances, in the long run, you’ll save more using them because using them will lower your electric bills. In the US, using green appliances already saved $14 billion in electricity bills since the first green appliances hit the market.

What is the most cost-efficient type of green refrigerator?

A. Green refrigerator with freezer on top
B. Green refrigerator with side-by-side door
C. Green refrigerator with ice dispenser

Answer: Letter A. Green refrigerators with freezer on top save 10% less energy than those with side-by-side door. Green refrigerators with ice dispensers also need more energy. Using ice cube containers and manually getting the ice from the freezer is more energy-efficient than using the automatic ice dispenser.

How do you save energy if you can’t afford to buy green appliances?

A. You can’t. Buy green appliances now.
B. By modifying how you use your kitchen appliances
C. By using gas powered appliances instead.

Answer: Letter B. Using gas stove instead of ordinary electric stoves are also not good for the environment because they use non-renewable source of energy. If you can’t afford to change all of your kitchen appliances to green appliances now, you can still save energy by changing the way you use your ordinary kitchen appliances. Simple things like not opening the door of your refrigerator too often and unplugging all your electrical kitchen appliances when you are not using them can save you a lot in energy bills.

Filed Under: Green Homes Tagged With:
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