Blog Water water everywhere
by Catherine LaineJanuary 23rd, 2007
Every few weeks or so, I hear about an interesting yet slightly massochistic challenge that a person sets themselves:
Be carbon neutral in NYC (for 1 month while living a relatively normal life).
Buy nothing new for a year (except of course food, toiletries and such stuff). I’m on Day one. Man was it hard to walk past that 75% off liquidation sale at Aldo’s. Yes, in that I am a stereotypical girl: I love shoes.
Daniel Altman from the International Herald Tribune’s Globalization blog poses this challenge: Try living on 20 liters of water a day.
I’ve bought 20 liters a day, the minimum suggested by the United Nations Development Program, in plastic bottles from a supermarket nearby. Let me tell you, carrying 20 liters - that’s 20 kilograms - even a few blocks in the summer sun is not a task to be trifled with. That sun comes in handy, though, when you want to heat up the water for a shower. I also learned that it takes about 5 liters to bathe and 3 liters for a decent shampoo, but rather more to flush a standard toilet just once. Unlike poor families, I haven’t been using water to wash food, and I’ve been using toilets in restaurants when I go out. But I still have to tip a bottle every time I want to wash my hands.
