The media is currently covered in articles about carbon footprints and the negative effects that carbon emissions have on the environment and a massive hype has been created around energy and carbon saving. I’m not saying that the hype around carbon emissions is a bad thing, but is anyone giving any thought to the scarce resource called water – especially in a predominantly arid country such as South Africa. According to an article in the Business Report, South Africa is currently ranked the 30th driest country in the world and 98% of our water resources have been allocated for use.

Some theories on global warming suggest that global warming will cause more extreme weather conditions on the planet as the planet’s weather systems try and balance the excess energy held by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This means that hot climates will get hotter, cold climates will get colder, dry areas will get drier, wet areas will get wetter and hurricanes will get stronger. If this is the case, South Africa’s current water supply will theoretically shrink in which case we won’t have enough water resources to counter the effects of shrinking rainfall, let alone the growing economy (once we get out of this recession).

I always remember my dad and grandfather referring to the big drought they had on our family farm down in the Langkloof in the 80’s and that the weather patterns are changing. My family settled on our farm in the 1760’s and if you read the family history things have certainly changed on the weather front. The Langkloof was originally called the ‘valley of thunder’ by explorers in the 1700’s because of the massive and frequent thunderstorms that they had in the area back then. Now days, they have a lot fewer thunderstorms and the rainfall pattern is changing. The farm is getting drier by the day and they have had to take preventative measures such as placing saw dust under the apple trees to reduce water evaporation from the soil, change from microjet irrigation technology to the more efficient dripper technology (saving roughly 30%). 30% saving on 60 hectares of apple trees is a massive amount of water let alone the 30% less water you had to pump and therefore saving in electricity.

Changing your water usage on a farm is not something that one does overnight, but rather over several years as there are several knock on effects. An example of such a knock on effect is that the trees need to adapt their root structures to collect water from a much condensed area. It also required immense foresight from my dad as well as capital injection to make the change else we would have run out of water and the trees would have bared smaller crops and we would not have been able to put food on the table to survive.

The point I’m trying to make is that every South African should take ownership of the fact that we have limited resources in our changing world and start promoting efficienct living and just live more efficient ‘green’ lives as a whole. Just like the closed farm environment where the farmer has to make a plan (boer maak ‘n plan) to survive given the limted resources they have, the rest of South Africa should do so as well. The current energy crisis and looming water crisis is not just going to fix itself. We all need to do our part and help solve these problems. Start saving in every aspect you can  as every drop counts – start minimising your general (water and carbon) footprint on earth today! We need to be efficient in the way we do things and live. It can only benefit you in every way in the long run!

Easy Energy has a wide range of energy saving and water saving devices which can assist you in reducing your water footprint as well as your carbon footprint. By saving water you don’t only save water but also save electricity – ‘killing two birds with one stone’!

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