Sparkle

I think I prefer the sparkle of light on water to any other type and besides, I find other sparkles very hard to capture. 

The two above show light sparkling on the Mediterranean Sea.  In fact both were taken at much the same time but they look quite different.

Then we have two fountains, the top one in Monte Carlo and the second in Albi in the south west of France.

Finally, I suppose this is the ultimate in sparkle, the best of both worlds, another fountain but this time from Versailles.  Personally I prefer the more natural look of the light playing on the sea.

If you'd like to join in the PhotoHunt and find other players, pay a visit to TNchick's site where you can find out more.

The dangers of water

We probably all know that many people in Africa, usually women and children, have to collect water from rivers, several times a day. Not only is it incredibly time consuming, the danger is that the river water is often contaminated and can spread diseases.

But there is another danger - wild animals.   Agnes, who lives in Malawi, has a terrible story to tell of the day she was attacked by a crocodile.

Photo from flickr/Ramy Alaa

"When the crocodile caught me, I started screaming as it was trying to pull me into the water, and then my two sons rushed into the river – they had a spear in their hands and they put this into the crocodile's mouth so it eventually released me.

"Then they rushed me to the hospital as my hand was broken. I had a deep wound here, so I had to go back to the hospital three times to try and get them to repair it."

It has left her with a terrible injury, unable to work, and terrified of fetching water.  Fortunately her village is one where WaterAid has installed a safe water point.  Not only are the risks of disease reduced enormously, people no longer  have to risk meeting a rogue elephant along the way, or a crocodile by the water.  Children now have time to go to school, and women can work.

Agnes' story from WaterAid

Harvesting fog

Photo WaterAid/Brent Stirton

People can harvest fog.  With the help of simple but innovative technology, tiny water droplets are trapped as the mountain fog passes through a plastic mesh, which is stretched between two poles. The water trickles down and is collected in a trough below and stored in tanks, providing enough clean and safe water for a whole village.

The advantages are:

· It doesn't cost a great deal to set up, operate or maintain.
· It is constructed in modules, so allowing it to be enlarged at a later stage.
· It has no significant impact on the environment.

There are some disadvantes too:

· It isn't suitable for everywhere.
· It's not very pretty.

There are high-tech versions connected to the internet, intended for people exploring wilderness, but the same idea can be used to help people in the poorest parts of the world, people who aren't just playing at survival, who live in real wildernesses.

Earth Day

Residents in the Langue de Barbarie section of Saint Louis in Senegal create rock or sand bag barriers to hold back the advancing sea

Photo IRIN/Phuong Tran

You may or may not think that the changing climate has anything to do with human activity on this planet.  You may or may not think that there is anything we can do about it.  The fact remains that the climate is changing,   and that the people who suffer the worst are those who can least afford to do anything about it.

The photo above shows the efforts of local people in Saint Louis, on the coast of Senegal, to combat steadily rising sea levels.  They think about it all the time.  Further north, the Sahara Desert is growing by 1000 sq km a year and people are having to travel further and further in desperate search of water.  In Mozambique, the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers flood with increasing frequency.  In Chokwe, people are learning to build grain silos in trees to keep the crops safe from floodwater.  Some communities are being moved to resettlement sites but then no longer have access to their farms or livelihoods.

Earth Day is not only about the environment, it's about people too.  People need to be able to live.

To those who have hunger, give bread.
To those who have bread, give a hunger for justice.

We need rain

When we arrived back in France two weeks ago, I thought the river level was rather low.  In the picture above, the area behind the large rocks at the bottom left is normally flooded, and the "island" is nearly, if not completely, submerged.

This picture was taken today, showing the water barely falling over the weir and a large expanse of "island" showing.

The canal running from the mill two weeks ago.

The same canal yesterday, with the sides exposed.

The stepping stones crossing the river, partially exposed in a way generally seen only in the summer.

The same view today.  No problem to cross right over today, or so it would seem, but they are very slippy in the middle.

Yesterday, intrepid explorer that I am, I took this photo from a close-to-central  stepping stone.

The same view today.  At this point I found a foot slip-sliding into the water, mercifully shallow.  Why is it the whole place is deserted until you do something stupid, then an audience appears as if by magic?

The level of the river is obviously a large part due to the weather, but not entirely.  Up river there is an enormous dam with associated hydroelectric power station.  The people who control it are in Paris and can't look out of the window and think, "oh dear, I've overdone that".  It works both ways: I've seen the river flood badly as the result of a mistake, and I've seen it totally empty.  The flood, in particular, was a disaster when houses all along the banks were ruined.  You can only be grateful that the same people aren't in charge of something more lethal, nuclear energy for instance, of which there is a super-abundance here in France.

Now, whether nuclear energy is the way to go, is another big debate, and that seems to be the path Max is taking to boil his water....

Free water

Remember Free Rice? In the same manner, Free Poverty is a (n addictive) game, a game that benefits a charity.

Instead of testing your spelling, you are tested on your geography. You merely have to place cities and well known sites on a map of the world. Easy peasy.

Let me tell you, they are VERY picky, most especially if you don't know the US of A too terribly well. You can be three countries out in Asia (THREE COUNTRIES) but woe betide you if you're three millimetres out in the USA. Still, I did get to super-hard level (yes I did) where I was very much helped by all the questions being placed in Algeria. Happily I know where that is. Can anyone beat 250?

Try it. Donate some water to Water Aid, one of my favourite charities. They do the dirty work.

PhotoHunter: water

Like many people we've had more than our fair share of water this year, though not as badly as many others. And not forgetting the people in some countries where they haven't enough.

Just four weeks ago, the river looked like this, with more rain forecast.

Fortunately the floods have subsided and the river is running more placidly, though the water is still muddy and full of debris.

The water is more placid, that is, until it arrives at this weir, where it is churned up once again as it generates electricity for our little town.

But you have to take the rough with the smooth. If you click on this you will see on the far side a tree that has come down river, and a log stuck in the middle of the weir.

Find other players: PhotoHunt

Washing without water

Recently the University of Leeds announced that one of their spin-off companies, Xeros, is commercialising a process of washing (and dry-cleaning) clothes, first developed by researchers at the university.

Plastic granules are put into the machine with the clothes to remove dirt. Tests have shown that they remove stains as effectively as normal washing methods and clothes are left as fresh. They estimate the new method will use less than 2% of the water and energy of a conventional machine, and of course there is no need for a tumble dryer. They are hoping it will be available in 2009.

Presumably there will be no need for a fabric conditioner, nor will you be hanging the clothes on an outdoor line, so I'm wondering how fresh is "as fresh"? Nevertheless, the saving in water and electricity will make it very, very attractive.

They believe the process can also be used for dry-cleaning, removing the need for harmful solvents which are linked to certain types of cancer, a great step in improving safety.

How will the soap manufacturers react? Will they be offering to supply a bar of soap to the developing world if we buy 10 packets of washing powder?

University of Leeds press release.

Updated with a more recent press release.

Blue gold

Photo from Flickr user jenny downing. Creative Commons Licence.

It's raining here in central France, and has been since yesterday afternoon. I'm not too sorry. Barcelona in the Catalan region of Spain is facing its worst drought for many years with water supplies at a fraction of the normal level.

Since mid-May ships from Société du Canal de Provence have been supplying Barcelona with drinking water along with the ships from the Marseilles water company to provide about 6 % of the daily water consumption of the Catalan capital. The contract was signed in April and deliveries are due to continue for six months.

This is of course a very expensive procedure. If water leaving Marseilles is about 1 euro per cubic metre, by the time it reaches Barcelona, its cost will have risen to 8 or 10 euros. Blue gold indeed.

Source Développment durable le journal (in French)

One into ten - ?

Photo from Flickr user jackace. Creative Commons licence.

Volvic, owned by Danone Waters, have launched a campaign to encourage people to buy bottled water. For every litre bought, Volvic will "generate" 10 litres of safe, clean water in Africa.

Yet again big business is "helping" Africa for its own purposes (cf P&G, Unilever).

Bottled water has had extremely bad press recently, with several campaigns pointing out that the water in our taps is as good if not better than bottled water and doesn't use up unnecessary energy. So to make us feel good about it, they have started this marketing campaign in the UK, apparently following successful similar efforts in France, Mexico, Germany and Japan.

They, bizarrely to my mind, compare the carbon emissions from the production of a litre of Evian or Volvic with the production of a kilo of chicken #!@#!! Why are they comparing water with a chicken? So you're better drinking water than eating a kilo (2.2 lbs) of chicken? Why are they not comparing bottled water with tap water I wonder?

My first thoughts are that I would rather donate money directly to a charity, WaterAid for instance, and do without Volvic and their cut altogether.

Related articles

• Britons begin to lose thirst for bottled water [via Zemanta]
• Tread lightly: Give up bottled water [via Zemanta]

World Water Day

Today, World Water Day, will be the first showing of Ali Hobbs film, To Begin. It tells the story of the women in Ethiopia who have to collect water every day for their families.

Photo from Flickr user gordontour. Creative Commons licence.

66% of the rural population in Jarso, southern Ethiopia, are still using unsafe water from rivers and ponds, and it is women and girls who are responsible for fetching the water.

It takes anything from 30 minutes to four hours to make the round trip with a wait of up to 50 minutes to fill the container. The film shows the women as they tell their stories.

Part of the film can be seen on The Guardian website. I urge you to watch it and then visit WaterAid to see their work to help.

Pedalling clean water

A team in California have come up with an idea that may help the 20% of the world's population that don't have ready access to fresh water. The idea has been developed in response to a competition, innovate or die, whose sponsors include Google.

At the moment it is still very much a work in progress, though a protoype, the Aquaduct, has been built.

Before I realised it was a protoype, I had some reservations about the video. Some of these questions are known to the team, such as whether it will be easy to maintain locally, and how affordable it will be because of course it's the poorest who have the most need of such a system.

I do have two further issues: I hope they aren't under the illusion that the tricycle will be used over a lovely smooth and well maintained road like the one in the video; and I really wish they hadn't perpetuated the stereotype that it is woman's work to fetch water to the extent that they do. It is true that it is mainly women who do fetch water in Africa, but we don't have to assume that it always will be so.

Source IRIN

Une maison de l'eau

A centre devoted to evaluating and promoting water technologies concerned with the management and treatment of water is to be built in La Ciotat, a town on the Mediterranean coast of France. It will be located behind the town hall.

Photo by Flickr user KiMiz. Creative commons licence.

This story caught my attention because about ten years ago we thought about living in the area but at the time all our parents were alive and we thought it was just too far from them. In spite of visiting several times, we have only this one remaining photo of our own (scanned) of a calanque, a rocky inlet, nearby.

To return to the point of this post, the purposes of the Maison de l'Eau will be

• educational especially for school children


• to provide training for professionals who work in the water industry in the region


• to conduct pilot studies into new approaches for conservation

There are already three projects planned:

One is a desalinisation system to produce between 1 and 2 cubic metres of fresh water per hour for use in the marina. The plant will be situated in the old shipyard. Salt water will be filtered under pressure through a membrane which retains the salts and micro-organisms. They particularly hope to develop a way of doing this using less energy.

Secondly, the use of waste water will be tested on the outskirts of new water treatment centres after treatment by ultraviolet light to disinfect it. The water produced will be used to irrigate green spaces.

Finally, the collection and use of rain water for watering the parc du Mugel, a 12 hectare area. It already has a gravity fed system dating back to the 19th century which will be totally restored.

This is all considered to be a good example of devlopment which is sustainable. I'm not personally very impressed with desalinisation plants, whether they use less energy or not. What happens to the salts which are removed from the water? They must go somewhere, so how do they dispose of them?

PlayPumps on YouTube

Remember the PlayPumps I told you about? Here is another video from National Geographic.

“Water is intimately linked with education and gender equality. Girls who have to spend time gathering water for the family tend not to be in school.” ~ Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General

The PlayPump

This picture of a playground roundabout demonstrates just how popular they are with children - very well used!

PlayPumps International have come up with the ingenious idea of harnessing the energy of children playing on a roundabout to pump water from deep underground (40 to 100 metres) to a water tank 7 metres above ground. People can draw water from a tap instead of walking for long distances to a source which may not be clean, and any excess is diverted back down the borehole.

The system is paid for by in part advertisements on the two sides of the water storage tank. The other two sides carry public service related messages. The advertisements are fairly strictly controlled, which would be one of my concerns.

Otherwise it seems to me a wonderfully ingenious way to utilise the energy of children. If it had been available years ago, my first son could have provided heated water all by himself!

Tasting water

Lyonnaise des Eaux, a large water company in France, has invited people to become tasters of tap water, in an effort ot rehabilitate water as a drink. They hope to be able to establish the areas where chlorine in the water leaves a noticeable taste.

It isnot a new idea. Other organisations are doing the same, such as Aleau.net. Apparently 40% of French people say they don't like the taste of tap water. As a result, water is used less and less for the purpose it is intended.

Reasons given for not liking tap water:

1. Bad taste
2. Taste of chlorine
3. Too much lime
4. Too hard
   

Personally, if I drink mineral water at all I prefer sparkling water, and of these Badoit is my favourite. Just enough but not too much sparkle.