This is written by my 10-year-old son, out of concern about the possibility of a Day Zero in Cape Town.

Author Matthew Atkins

Cape Town’ s dams are currently 24% full. You might think that is a lot, but it is not! We can only use 14% of that water because there is dirt in the other 10% of the water at the bottom of the dam or reservoir.

All over the internet people are talking about Day Zero, which has now been pushed out again, but we still need to be concerned. Day Zero is when the local government shuts off the municipal water that comes through our taps every day and we will need to line up by tanks of water and collect 25 litres of water a day per person.

These are some things we all can do to prevent this from happening;

If you have borehole or WellPoint water, you can use it for;

·         Watering your garden, only if you must

·         Filling up your pool, only if necessary

·         And you can use this water to flush your toilet

This all saves a lot of the municipal water.

You might be collecting your 5 litres of bottled water from the shop. That is good but not enough.

Make sure you have buckets in your house to put under your shower to  catch the water.

When it does rain, collect that water.

Put buckets under the drain pipes to catch the water when it rains.

You might have noticed that I have not mentioned having a bath. Never bath, just shower. A bath uses too much water. If you bath for some reason, then be sure when you are finished to take all the water out and put in your pool or use it to flush the toilet.

But, Never Bath.

For your shower buy water saving shower heads. You might think this is expensive, but just say to yourself “Its better than not showering.”

One way you could top up your pool is using the water from JoJo tanks. Put the tanks under the gutter and then when it rains, it fills the water tank up and you can use that water in your pool or to flush your toilets.

A big water saving method is to use hand sanitizer instead of washing your hands with soap and water. And it is not expensive. Take away the soap and place hand sanitizer at every tap in your home and in the office.

in the world there are billions and billions of litres of water. 97% of it is sea water which we can’t drink and only 3 % of the worlds water is fresh. Did you know that 2% of that water is ice, so that leaves us with only 1% of the worlds water to use and drink?

What are you doing to save water?

 Read more on this subject; The Benefits of the Water Crisis in Cape Town