BMC students will learn how to save water

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to distribute booklets on water conservation to the five lakh students in its schools free-of-cost to inculcate water consciousness amongst them.

According to a senior civic official working on the project, the booklets are being prepared in nine languages and will be distributed to students in classes between Std I and Std XI. “The Std I booklet will include more pictures, songs and graphics. For higher classes, it will contain short stories and analytical figures so that students can understand the gravity of the subject,” he said.

“After learning about rainwater harvesting and conservation in school, students will be able to gauge how much water has been wasted by not attending to running and leaked taps, or during flushing and washing cars and utensils. Though these are small activities, most of the water is wasted through them. We need to be more meticulous about conservation,” said officials from the hydraulic department.

“We appeal to citizens, academicians, artists and literary figures to send rainwater harvesting and conservation related stuff to us in the next two months. We want to make booklet interactive and innovative so that students read it and practice its advice. Once the idea takes off in corporation schools, we may extend it to private schools,” said Rahul Shewale, chairman of the BMC’s standing committee.

Even though the city gets only 3,400 million litres of water per day (mld), against the requirement of 3,800 mld, people waste nearly 20% of it due to excessive use.