SAVE THE WATER
 
Commentator: Jules Older
Vermont Public Radio
 

ANNOUNCER Are you running short on water? Jules Older has some tips for saving water… and saving the planet.

POINTER Everybody talks about saving water. I have a couple of suggestions on how to conserve what we have left. But I must warn you—these are suggestions you may not like. This is Jules Older, and I'll be back soon to tell you all about ‘em.

Every summer, without fail, some of us run out of water. It happens in parts of Vermont, of the United States, of the world.

Every summer, without fail, we read expert advice on how to conserve water. Fix leaky faucets.
Put a brick in your toilet tank. Buy a low-volume toilet. Stop watering the lawn.

All that’s fine, but there are other solutions that don’t get talked about.
Sometimes it’s because they go against long-ingrained habits, sometimes because they break long-standing taboos. Yet they offer a far cheaper solution and a more effective one than low-volume toilets. So let’s talk about two of them.

First, when you brush your teeth, turn off the water between rinses. This will seem unnatural. This will seem un-American. But this will save your town… well, it’s easy to see how much this will save. One last time, keep the water running as you brush. Only, let it run into a bucket. At the end of the day, see how much is in the bucket. Multiply that by the number of tooth-brushers in your town. You'll find the correct answer is, A lot. It saves a lot of water.

Once you’ve mastered brushing without the accompanying sound of an open faucet, you may want to take the next step—stop running water when you do the dishes. But that’s for the advanced class. Let us now move on to the second way to save water, the one that violates a long-standing taboo.

Pee outside. Yes, pee outside. On the daisies, by the hydrangea, in the rose garden, under the maple tree—pee outside. Every time you do, you’ll be accomplishing three things:
1. You'll be saving between two and seven gallons of pure, clean drinking water. That’s how much each flush of the toilet consumes.
2. You'll be adding liquid to parched ground
3. You'll be fertilizing—free and without charge—your beloved daisies, hydrangeas, roses and maples.

You'll also be having fun. Yeah, it’s fun to urinate in the great outdoors.

I can hear two objections welling up.
· fine for men—what about women? And
· the reason we have porcelain toilets and municipal sewage systems is that urine is dirty, nasty stuff that’s full of disease-causing pathogens.

So, here are the answers:
a. No, it’s fine for women, too. In most parts of the world, women as well as men pee outside. It’s something you quickly get used to, kinda like brushing your teeth without the water running. But even if only men did it, we’d still be saving a vast amount of water.
b. And, no, urine is not as bad as its rap. Not nearly. On whaling ships, they used to keep a barrel around for sailors to clean their hands. (Giving new meaning to that famous TV ad, “Yer soaking in it!”) When excreted from a healthy body, urine is nearly sterile. It’s used as a safe and effective fertilizer all over the world.

But if you still have reservations about human fertilization, don’t pee on the veggies, don’t pee where you're gonna be weeding and don’t pee in the same place every day. After reading the autobiography of New Zealand author, Catherine Mansfield, I nearly killed a young lemon tree by excessive fertilization. Apparently, Catherine’s lemon tree responded better to night soil than mine did to a daily dose of urine.

If you want to read more about the use of human excrement on growing things, read The Humanure Handbook by J.C. Jenkins; it’s distributed by Chelsea Green Press.

Oh, and if you want your lawn to survive the inevitable summer droughts, do it a favor—stop cutting it so low and so often! Give the grass an extra inch of growth, and it will thank you by staying green while the neighbor’s is as dry as a pretzel.

This is Jules Older, standing outside and proud in Albany, Vermont, the Soul of the Kingdom.

Announcer: Jules Older has written more than 25 books for kids and adults. He's editor-in-chief of Ski Press Canada and Ski Press USA magazines.

Home page for julesolder.com