Wipro Earthian 2013

I led a team and represented Don Bosco Egmore, to submit an entry for Wipro Earthian 2013 with the theme 'Sustainability and Water'. I was in std. 8 then and we had done a complete water audit of our school campus and made a comprehensive report of our study. We did not win the competition but the experience of preparing this document is memorable. A brief summary is presented below. The entire document is also attached for download.

In this section we present our views on the various aspects of water management on our school campus. We utilise on an average about 16,000 litres of water on a working day and on an average 5 litres per student/staff. This did seem quite reasonable to us except for the social problem with regards to the usage of taps, that could help to reduce our water wastage. Leakages account for about 1500 litres/day and in our observation about 75% of it was due to irresponsible usage of taps. About 25% was due to technical problems such as leakages in pipes here and there, but we found that they were attended to as soon as they were reported. We intend to recommend to our school management to introduce a ‘spot a leak’ reporting system by giving some kind of incentives ( ranging from a pat of appreciation to announcing the names over the intercom) to the students who report leakages that they find on campus. The idea is to make heroes of these students so that many more would be motivated to report and thereby being responsible towards the environment and caring for the campus would slowly become a habit for our Don Bosco boys. Creating awareness about using taps responsibly is yet another task that will bring down the water wastage. During our recess times, as part of this project, we used to rush to the hand wash and drinking water facilities on campus, to observe how the students used them. Most of the students were so engrossed in their playful acts that they did not quite give attention to the water they were using neither to the tap that probably kept flowing even after they left. We intend to capture this act on our handy cam and play it back for the students so that largely we could achieve it by self-realisation. With the statistical data that we gathered through this project we intend to convince our management that preventive measures too need to be put in place to reduce water wastage. Sensor based taps have proven to be efficient in water utilisation and installing them especially at our hand wash and drinking water facilities are essential. The management could also gradually put in place sensor based water systems in our toilets to ensure that they are clean all the time and water is used efficiently too. The quality of the water on our campus, in our observation, was good and our underground and overhead tanks were well maintained. The sources of water are: government supply, private tankers and the bore wells. Though we have no control over the quality of the government supply, it has been good enough for our use so far. The quality of the water brought in by private tankers can be checked and rejected if found to be below quality. Our school management has been ensuring that these private tankers bring in good quality water. So we were satisfied with the quality of water on campus. What was alarming to us was the use of about 5000 litres of water for gardening and its associated leakages when the water hose pipes were connected to the taps at various points. This included the watering of our basketball court too. Water for our garden is definitely essential and we observed that our gardener was not over watering our plants either. But like in most truly green campuses we could use recycled water from our own campus for this purpose, we felt. From our statistical data it is evident that approximately 10,000 litres of wastewater is being sent out of our campus every day. If the layout of the pipes could be redesigned to segregate waste water that could be recycled, in our estimate, we could hold back at least 5000 litres per day instead of letting it go down the drain. Today wastewater treatment plants are available for varying degrees of treatment required and the one suitable for gardening could be installed on our campus. This will not only bring down water requirement but also reduce the wastewater creation by 50%. Watering of plants could be further made efficient by integrating a ‘smart plant watering system’. Our students could take this up as a project and benefit from learning how to deploy such sensor based applications to create smart environments. Low cost sensors that can determine the moisture levels in the soil could be plugged into the soil and these sensors could be programmed to report their respective water requirements. Further all these sensors could be integrated using technologies such as ‘Internet of Things’ in order to be able to make collective decisions too. The ‘internet of sensors’ could also be extended to build a network of sensors that detect leakages and, water meters could be used to estimate the water usage over the entire campus. So putting it in a nutshell, all this amounts to doing a real-time water audit on our campus. This will help to create awareness among our students on water usage and will further educate them on how water auditing is to be done within an organisation. We also need to be aware of the electrical energy required to take all the ground water to our overhead tanks. In effect we are taking our entire our water requirement to our overhead tanks using electrical energy. Motor pumps that can pump at the rate of 25 litres per minute would take 10 hours to take the entire 16,000 litres that we require per day, upto our overhead tanks. Besides this, electrical energy is also used to pump up ground water using our bore wells. To completely meet the water requirements of our campus it is being pumped currently for about 12 hours per day as well. Now this turns our attention to looking at alternate sources of electrical energy to keep the costs down as well as to save electric energy, which is scare too. But nothing is stopping us from using the blazing sun and the powerful wind which seems to be galloping through our campus every day. Yes, we need to tap the potential of these sources to augment our electrical energy requirement on campus and to be less dependent on the power grids. The rainwater harvesting potential of our campus is 1,82,517KL annually and the annual requirement of water on our campus is 6566KL. This brings us to the question of whether we are utilising the rainwater effectively, and storing it and using it efficiently. Well, in our observation, our school campus is well designed for rainwater harvesting. Besides the pipes that collectively bring the water from the rooftops to the point of intended harvest, several other design features to retain the water within our campus have also been incorporated. But looking at the figures with regard to the rainwater harvesting potential we probably can do a lot more. Moreover we may be very responsible in ensuring that our ground water table is well fed, but we could probably be facing the problem of excess withdrawal by others in our neighbourhood. We do not have a control over this and that is the reason why we are probably depended on the private tankers largely as our water source. What we didn’t take into consideration was the one litre of water brought in by each of the students to school everyday. We have 3200 students and that amounts to 3200 KL of water used on our campus for drinking every day. Now, this is yet another water usage activity on campus but it is not directly connected with the mathematics of source and usage of water on our campus. While we were doing this project, one of us received a mail from a cousin studying in Std IV in a school in Dubai. It read as follows: The reason why I am writing to you is because I would like to share a message with you about saving water and electricity. Did you know that only less than 1% of all the water on Earth can be used by people? The rest is salt water (the kind you find in the ocean) or is permanently frozen and we can't drink it, wash with it, or use it to water plants .As our population grows, more and more people are using up this limited resource. Therefore, it is important that we use our water wisely and not waste it. We need to conserve electricity because it saves valuable energy around the world. Not only can you save energy, but you can also save on your electric bill when you take beneficial steps to conserve your electricity. Here are a few suggestions to save water and electricity: Some ways to save water: 1) Repair leaking faucets, etc. to stop the wastage of water. 2) Close taps whenever not required. 3) Do not let water run while brushing teeth. 4) Do not over water your garden. 5) Wash your vehicles using a bucket rather than a pipe. Some ways to save electricity: 1) Be sure to turn off lights when you leave a room. 2) Keep doors and windows closed when heat or air conditioning is on. 3) Make use of daylight hours and do not turn on lights and lamps. 4) Always run a full load in the washing machine. 5) Keep the oven door closed until the food is done cooking. For a desert country like the UAE educating their children right from their formative years on such issues is important for them. But we seem to be basking in the glory of living in a land of fertile soil, rivers and mountain ranges that help to bring us rain. Wake up my fellow Indians, let's put our glorious past aside and start preparing today for creating a sustainable region that can be utilised by the generations to come.

Don Bosco Egmore Chennai.pdf

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