|  Photo by Steve Crane If everything goes according to plan,the two cooling towers at the old Athlone power station will be demolished on Sunday 30 May 2010. Stabilising rings around one of the towers fell to the ground on Sunday 14 Feb. 2010 and engineers have recommended that the towers be demolished as soon as possible. The event is planned in such a way to give residents the opportunity to view the demolition from a safe distance. Surrounding roads are likely to be closed with Metro Police,South African Police Services,Traffic and Emergency services on hand to ensure everyone’s safety. Read Full Story… - Water your garden before 10:00 in the morning,or after 16:oo in the afternoon,this eliminates a lot of evaporation.
- Collect grey water from your bath,sinks and laundry and use these for irrigating your garden. You can invest in professionally installed and fully automated grey water recycling system for this purpose.
- Schedule your garden irrigation by watering less frequently,but for longer periods of time – this way,the water will sink deeper into the ground,encouraging a deeper root system and stronger plants.
- Plant indigenous and water-wise plants in your garden – try avoiding planting plants that require a lot of water. Lawns are especially bad culprits,requiring up to four times more water than other plants. Try and reduce the amount of lawn in your garden with paving and creating more flower beds.
- Make sure your irrigation system is not leaking and spraying where the water is needed and not on the road or pathways.
- Dont let your pool backwash water go to waste,you can use a Water Rhapsody Pool Backwash system to clean the water and send it straight back to your pool.
- Shower instead of taking a bath – a bath uses an average of 160 litres,while a five-minute shower uses only 60 litres of water.
- Keep the tap closed while you are brushing your teeth or shaving – this can save up to 20 litres of water a month.
- Cut down the amount of water flushed down the toilet pan. Toilets use about 30% of the total water used in a household. An old-style single flush toilet can use up to 13 litres of water in one flush. Install a Water Rhapsody Multiflush and control exactly how much water you need to flush the pan. This could save you a whopping 7,300 litres of water each year. The Mulitflush device will pay for itself within a couple of weeks!
- Make a point of checking to see if there are any leaks in the toilets or taps throughout your house. You can check if your toilet is leaking by adding a few drops of food dye to your cistern –if the colour seeps into the bowl,you have a leak. A toilet leak or a dripping tap can both waste up to 30 litres of water an hour,and this adds up to 10,000 litres every year. Get them fixed – the cost you will save on water over a 12-month period will more often than not cover the plumber’s bill.
- Only use your dishwasher or washing machine when they are fully loaded.
- Don’t wash and rinse your dishes under running water – rather fill a sink with soapy water,wash them,and then rinse them in a sink of fresh water.
- Use two buckets instead of the hosepipe when washing your car,this can save up to 300 litres of water each time.
 Cape Town –Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica has given tap water in all 2010 FIFA World Cup host cities a clean bill of health.
Releasing the 2010 Host Cities Drinking Water Quality Management Audit Report on Wednesday,Sonjica said the world can rest assured that tap water in all host cities is safe to drink. The audit used the Blue Drop Certification System,an incentive-based regulation system which the department introduced in September 2008 to rate municipalities across the country. All of the host cities scored 95 percent under the certification system and were awarded Blue Drop Status. Johannesburg (98.39 percent) and Cape Town (98.18 percent) got the highest scores,while Rustenburg (95.1 percent),Port Elizabeth (95.08 percent) and Bloemfontein (95.05 percent) ranked the lowest. Over the last six months the country’s overall South African drinking water quality was measured as 96 percent,an improvement over the 2009 Blue Drop Report when the country’s towns and municipalities scored on average 93.3 percent. Relative to other countries South Africa have safe tape water.
“You go to other countries and at the hotels there’s a tag there –don’t drink from the taps. We’ve never had that,”said Sonjica  The largest timed cycling event in the world,the Cape Argus Pick ’n Pay Cycle Tour is taking place this Sunday the 14th of March around our most beautiful Southern Peninsula in Cape Town.
The grueling 109km will pose great challenges for the 35 000+ participants,young and old alike. There are many children facing greater challenges on a daily basis. I have therefore set myself the challenge to complete the Argus Cycle Tour not once,but twice on the day to raise funds for children in need. That will be slightly more than 218km! (Lance Armstrong will also be riding here,wonder if he will do it twice on the day?)
All funds raised will be donated to The Chaeli Champaign The Chaeli Champaign is a registered Non-Profit Organization (NPO 037338)  striving to promote the rights of children with disabilities to include them in every aspect of community life. In the past five years they have provided assistive devices to over 300 children and have implemented their physiotherapy programs in four communities. After visiting Zelda,Chaeli and their team in Plumstead and seeing first hand the amazing work they do and accomplish,I knew I had to do something. They need our help! All the children that they reach,needs our help! Please support this worthy cause. Donations of any amount will be greatly appreciated,but since my challenge is set at 218km it will be amazing to receive some sponsors per km. Let your imagination run wild! For donation details have a look at the facebook group
Doing the Argus Cycle Tour Twice (x2) for Charity I have had the great pleasure of sharing the road with 7 time Tour de France winner,Lance Armstrong,for just a couple of minutes while out cycling earlier this week and uploaded some photos to the facebook group. To all those cycling on Sunday,have fun and be safe! A pilot project to test whether reusing grey water is feasible began about a  year ago. Fourteen homes have reuse systems installed,and the city Guelph - Canada,would like another 16 homeowners to sign on. Ben Polley is convinced. The home builder installed a grey water system last year in the Manitoba Street heritage home he and wife Jen Woodside were renovating. “Since we’ve installed it we have required zero city water for toilet flushing,” Polley said. “Grey water” is used water leaving sinks,bathtubs and washing machines. Such water is collected,disinfected and stored in tanks,and then used instead of clean water to flush toilets. “Most people would agree we don’t need potable water for toilet flushing,” Galliher said,adding reusing grey water can reduce water consumption by 30 per cent,and save homeowners accordingly on their water bill. Read Full Story… A recent workshop suggested that harvesting rainwater could improve domestic groundwater supply. Hydro-geologist Fatchy Muhammad said rainwater was a valuable resource that should be collected as much as possible on the ground instead of being directly drained away. “Rainwater has good mineral content,which should not just be washed to sea. If we provide water absorption,it will become groundwater and help manage floods at the same time,” he said. Fatchy said his aim was to have balanced usage of groundwater and tap water. When households or companies use groundwater,he said,they should first examine the availability of groundwater on their land. When the groundwater resource is in surplus,they can choose to use it or tap water instead. “If they use groundwater,they should conserve rainwater by digging biopore infiltration holes or wells,” he said,adding that this would lead to balanced usage. When asked about the groundwater tax applied to corporations,he said companies should pay based on the disparity between the groundwater they use and the rainwater they collect. Read Full Story… Mumbai:In order to give a boost to Rainwater Harvesting (RWH),the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to give a rebate in property tax as an incentive to buildings and housing societies who set up Rain Water Harvesting systems. The BMC proposes to award points to residential buildings that have adopted eco-friendly measures and thereby give an incentive in the form of rebate on property taxes. “There’s already a provision in the new capital Property Tax amendment,that property tax rebate will be awarded to housing societies that go green. So,we have proposed that for every ten points that a housing society is awarded,it gets a 10 per cent rebate. If it fulfills all 30 points,there will be a 20 per cent rebate given on property tax. The rules are under formulation,” said Anil Diggikar,additional municipal commissioner. “We have already prepared a criterion for discount,depending on the points a building earns,” Diggikar said. The important features considered for buildings and housing societies are rainwater harvesting,grey water recycling plants,solid water management,segregation of organic and non-organic waste,creating manure from waste etc. The main objective of making rainwater mandatory in all buildings is to recharge groundwater and augment overall water availability. This measure will ensure that rainwater is tapped and directed to recharge groundwater or stored for direct consumption by occupants of the buildings. The government intends to bring the eco-housing policy for new constructions into effect from April1,2010. Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in India and its partners have completed 16 Rainwater harvesting projects in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh which covers the business of the Indian food industry. The projects have the combined capacity to harvest 36 lakh liters (3.6 million liters) of rainwater annually,benefiting the schools and surrounding communities. “Rain water harvesting has emerged as a viable option to redirect rainwater into the ground,which otherwise goes waste,” said Dr. Saleem Romani,former chairman of the Central Ground Water Board. “We need to persuade more people and society at large to take up rain water harvesting projects.” But the project isn’t a first. Coca-Cola and its bottling partners have installed more than 500 rain water harvesting projects in 22 states in the country,in an effort to contribute to better water management. In other environmental efforts,Coke and its bottling partners said last month all their new vending machines and coolers are expected to be hydrofluorocarbon-free (HFC) by 2015. The move to HFC-free refrigeration is expected to reduce the equipment’s direct greenhouse gas emissions by 99 percent. The world’s fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases,Japan,has  pledged to cut its emissions by a quarter by 2020. To reach that goal,various sectors of Japanese society,from local governments to corporate giants and the general public,are going green SIX simple acts – that is all you need to do daily to shrink your carbon footprint. This simple message is driving the Japanese Government’s campaign to reduce the carbon load of its 127 million people. And the six actions? They are things which people can easily adopt in their daily lives:cut air-conditioner usage,drive less,avoid plastic bags,conserve water,recycle,and turn off power switches. “The public tends to think that efforts in carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction are difficult and complex,and will require use of nuclear and solar energy and factories to reduce emissions,” explains Shigeru Komori,director of the lifestyle policy office in the environment ministry. “In our campaign,we try to show that everyone uses lighting,computers,air-conditioner and heating daily,and all these contribute to energy consumption. So it is important for each person to bear some responsibility to reduce emissions.” Read Full Story… |  Against a global rainfall average of 870mm per year,South Africa receives a pitiful 450mm,making it the worlds 30th driest country. Water Rhapsody,with 15 years experience in water conservation,is number 1 in South Africa in Grey water recycling systems and Rainwater harvesting systems. Water Rhapsody,a WWF Green Trust award winner,can save you up to 90% of your municipal water bills!  WWF Green Trust Award |
