In my Grand mother days, there were zero release of water from the house to road.Water was optimally used, so as to save the resources. Also, there were no modern gadgets like taps, showers, etc., which wastes the water.
In olden days, water used to be drawn from the open well. Hence, people were habituated to use water optimally. There were not much use of soaps are shampoos, which consumes more water . mostly shikai powder or kunkudukaya or vattiveru were used to take head bath.green gram powder was used to clean up the skin, which consumes a little water.It is a kind of “Reduction” methods of consumption of resources. Also , ash was used to clean the utensils. It again allowed to consume a little water.
The used water was Channelised to pass through the trees one after other. This allows the growth of trees and plants also decreases the work of watering.The water is also “Reused”.
Despite of channelled the water to trees and plants, there used to be excess water.Most of the people including my maternal Grand parents dug up a pit to percolation of water, so as to conserve the water.It is a kind of a “Recycling” of water.
The pit is made up of pebbles (metal/rocks) of different size in ascending order from the top.over that sand is aranged.the coal pieces are also arranged over the sand.This mechanism allows seepage of leftover watein the pit.The coal also grab the foul smell emanating out of the decomposed materials reaching to the pit.The pit used to be cleaned and cleared once or twice in a year.This the one of the reasons why the mosquitoes breeding was less in olden days.
In contrary to the old and traditional habits, presently every single drop of water is reaching the drains and reaching to the water bodies without treatment, causing many health and pollution problems.
Hence, the age old practice of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and conservation of water is worth emulation in the present scenario of need to conserve the resources for the next generations.
