Video: How to keep water clean and use it wisely · Global Voices
Juliana Rincón Parra

Water conservation videos seem to be trending, as people and organizations make videos with tips and advice on how to better manage our water resources. From tips on reusing gray water or minimizing wasted water when we flush the toilet, to kids in the Valle del Colca in Peru explaining the importance of keeping community water sources clean.
These kids from the rural area of the Colca Valley in Peru represent the consequences of polluting water sources and drinking from them. Rosita and Abelito's mother sends them to get some water for the house, and off they go with their bucket to the irrigation ditch. However, community members have been peeing in the water, people have been tossing trash into it and animals have also been there to drink the contaminated water, having no other place to drink. Rosita and Abelito are thirsty after their long trek, so they take a few sips, and then go back home with their full pail of water.  Their chores having been done, their mother gives them permission to play, but it is cut short when they have serious stomach pains. Mother takes them to the health post and the doctor makes them better, warning them however, that they shouldn't drink water that hasn't been boiled to make it safe for drinking.  At the end, Abelito warns the audience not to urinate or defecate in water sources, and not to litter them either, so that we can all enjoy clean water.
The Water Savers 4 Life decided to sing for water conservation. Their ten tips are sung to the rhythm of a popular Christmas carol:
This Spanish household saves water in a literal sense. When they do laundry (using ecological soaps) the gray water that is expelled from the machine they have rerouted to a special container where it is saved, and using a hose system, they have redirected the water to a bucket in the bathroom. When they need to clean floors, they use the sudsy water, but it is also what they use when they need to flush the toilet, filling the bucket and then dumping it into the toilet.
In Singapore there are also concerns on water conservation, and this video shows some tips many of us could apply: shorter showers, washing teeth with a glass of water instead of an open faucet, reusing the rinse water from our washer to flush toilets or mop floors, washing veggies in a bowl of water, among others. It also shows that for some cultures, saving water just requires getting creative:  one tip requires saving water from rinsing rice to water plants. If we are not rice consumers, what other tips could we come up that are tailored specifically to our water consumption patterns?
As can be seen in the previous example and this following one, water supplying companies are logically one of the strongest advocates of adequate water use.  From Colombia, in the city of Cartago, the Emcartago utility company not only uploads videos on water consumption to the internet, but they also go to the different neighborhoods to train people on good water saving habits. By showing video examples of good and bad water usage, they get their message across on how to adequately save not only on water, but also on other utilities such as gas and electricity.
And last, but not least: many new houses have water efficient toilets, but the rest of households with water guzzling toilets and no money to replace them with a new model need not despair.  This following tip will give anyone the possibility of saving at least a liter of water with every flush. By filling a 1.5 Lt water bottle with water, and placing it in the toilet tank, it will save you as much water as is displaced by the bottle itself:
Remember, saving water not only saves the planet, but it can also save you money by reducing your utility bills.  Happy Blog Action Day 2010!