What If It Just Went...Poof?

 Before you read this, think about the appearance of the world. If you’ve never seen a globe or a picture of the Earth, look it up. Now that you’ve seen it or are picturing it, what color do you see the most? I’ll give you a hint; it starts with a ‘b’ – the color blue. There could be many colors based on the globe you’re looking at, but there will always be blue. What does the blue represent, you ask? Water. It represents lakes, oceans, rivers, ponds, and every body of water on this Earth. There’s lots of blue, so how could it ever run out?

You know how you brushed your teeth this morning, went to the bathroom, and washed your face? Guess what you used. Water. When you’re filling your water bottle up in a water fountain, that’s water too. Another important factor is that it’s clean. We live in Boston. We have beautiful beaches where we can swim, ponds where we can cool off after a long day, we can just walk around and drink water whenever we want. Even though you might not think so, we have it very good when it comes to water, yet we still waste it.

In school we do projects, read articles, and write essays almost every year about water. We’ve seen pictures of people in places where they can’t go to school because they have to walk for miles to find filthy water that will only make them sick. Even this year I learned we only have access to 1% of all the water on Earth. We’re aware of the problem, but no one seems to take action because we’ve never been in the situation ourselves. We might not realize it, but there’s a piece of some people that just can’t understand it without living it. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”

I’ve seen kids and adults wasting water without a second thought because “it was just a minute of letting the faucet run!” The standard for faucets since 1994 has been between 2.2 gallons (8.33 liters) per minute and 2.5 gallons (9.46 liters) per minute. It really isn’t just a minute. Kids dump their water on the playground for fun, knowing they can just refill it later. Sometimes they’re not just wasting clean water, but dirtying the water around us by throwing trash into a pond and saying “oh it’ll just wash away.” It’s expensive to filter water, and sometimes we can’t. My own faucet has been leaking for a few months now, but still, my own family (that includes adults) doesn’t want to deal with it because the water will just “keep coming”. We have never been put into a real situation where there is simply no water. Most of the people that live around us here have never had a concern.

If there was one thing I would do to change people’s opinions about conserving water, it would be to shut off all water before going anywhere for simply a day.

Think about your daily routine. Maybe you wake up in the morning and have a glass of water to start your day before hopping into a crisp, cool shower to wake you up. After that, you might brush your teeth and wash your face, before doing skincare. Then perhaps you head into the kitchen to eat your breakfast before packing your things and heading to school or work. That’s probably not exactly what you do, but everyone needs to take a shower, brush their teeth, and wash their face. Everyone needs to drink too. How nice does it feel to have a nice cold cup of water on a summer day? Crisp as fall leaves, as refreshing as waking up after a long rest.

Now I want you to think about that routine if you woke up to an alert saying that all water in the town has run out. You wake up in the morning and look over at your bedside table at an empty glass of water. You get up, thirsty and confused, and walk into the bathroom to take a shower. Although, you find the water won’t turn on. Even more confused, you walk over to your cell phone and see a message that there is no more water. All gone. Nothing. You can’t survive, no one can. Maybe this won’t happen in your lifetime, but if people continue to let the faucet run or throw trash into a lake, it will. The world doesn’t have endless resources. The Earth offers us hospitality by allowing us to live our lives in the comfort of its atmosphere, but being polite to your host is just as important as your host being polite to you.