When I moved to Beijing from Canada, I fancied myself an environmentalist. I’d been the head of the Environmental committee at both my high schools. I had been an activist outside of school as well and regularly attended rallies, wrote letters and campaigned for a cleaner Earth with my music. I particularly championed the water cause and wrote a song about it in 2004 called H20. So you can imagine how humbling it was when some simple water saving techniques were taught to me as a matter of course by my Chinese (then) boyfriend’s mother. The fact that I had never thought of them before was, well, embarrassing.

In the West, we are taught to put a brick in the back tank of our toilets to save water when flushing. That’s about it. It’s potable water we flush with, unless we have been smart enough to build a grey water system. But, since I hadn’t yet reached that level of domestic sophistication, the best I could do back home was to save the bath water from disappearing down the drain. Once a week, I’d use it to mop the floors.

But in our old-style apartment here in Beijing, the sink didn’t have its pipes covered in a decorative ceramic covering down to the floor (or a cabinet) like most sinks do back home. The sink’s drain funnels to an open spout that splashes the waste water down into a squared-in tiled drain area. Placing a simple bucket in this area with a scoop means that these precious drops of water aren’t lost forever. Every time you use the toilet, just scoop from the collected sink water directly into the toilet bowl and your human waste is naturally flushed down.

In addition to this trick, we have begun to catch the laundry water as well. Since Monday is laundry day, every Monday night the two bins in the laundry/bathroom downstairs are full to the brim with laundry water. We use it to mop the floors as well as to flush the toilets.When I use my "soap nuts," I also use it to water the plants.

As the volume in the buckets decreases over the next few days, all of the water from washing vegetables is added to keep it replenished.

We have two bathrooms in our apartment, so the second one uses the waste water from showers and baths, primarily. I have learned to keep an eye on which set of buckets is full before choosing which bathroom I’ll use!

In 2011, inspired by China’s water saving techniques, I wrote another song about water called "Wash Water" based specifically on the domestic saving of it—less so the political overview like the song mentioned above. That song can be found here. (Chinese version can be found here!)

Ultimately, there’s no perfect way to be an environmentalist, but my (now) in-laws have taught me that it’s the the daily personal efforts that make a real difference.

Try it!

Photos by: Ember Swift & Guo Jian

To celebrate the World Water Day (March 22, 2015), Guanghui E, the president of the Young Volunteer Association of Hebei Normal University organized a Water Dragon event together with Thirst. The activity involved a large group of students and also teachers from all departments.

Water dragon is one of Thirst’s trademark activity. Thirst staff will draw the dragon well in advance. Then, with the help of volunteers guide the students into dragon formation. Once the Dragon is formed a photo is captured from a high vantage point. The Dragon event takes approximately an hour.

The water dragon represents the joint effort of Chinese Youth to demonstrate they care about China’s future and the water crisis. So far Thirst has successfully created 8 water dragons in schools in Dalian, Beijing and Shanghai, also received a Guinness World Record with the largest human dragon consisted of 1,973 participants and was achieved by Thirst and National Institute of Technology (NIT)- in Beijing- on 6 November 2013.

During the event students are interviewed (for our event video, and for their own student newspapers and media) and participate in activities.

Our Thirst education team had a very early start and traveled for 2 hours by train, from Beijing to Hebei province, in order to arrive at Hebei Normal University for 8am. On arrival they met with a lovely group of students who kindly helped to organize the Water Dragon participants and helped guide them around the university for the day.We had a test run of the human dragon at around 2pm, and successfully executed the final water dragon (consisting of around 300 Students) at 4PM – which looked incredible! We had a great time with the students and everyone really enjoyed themselves –congratulations, this was our first Water Dragon of 2015.

Zhangyu from the Thirst club team then delivered our ‘We Water Experience’ Presentation on the key issues surrounding the problem of water scarcity, Including; the hydrological cycle, the facts on water pollution, figures regarding our water footprint and the concept of‘Invisible Water’ (These are water consumption facts that we would not usually think about, i.e. it takes 4,500 litres of water to produce a 300 gram beef steak!). Students who were once confused or unaware about these concepts had their eyes opened to the facts on these issues, inspiring the audience to adopt water-wise habits into their daily lives.

As the co-organizer of the activity, we at Thirst would like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone that was involved at Hebei Normal University for their outstanding efforts and overall support with this amazing project – You are all Water Heroes!

If you are interested in getting involved with our cause and perhaps organizing a water dragon event at your school, please contact us by email, we are eager to help. info@thirst4water.org.

Thirst is an NGO which is creating a water-wise generation of youth in China. We facilitate free ‘We Water Experience’ workshops and club activities at schools across the country. This program is sponsored by the Foundation for UNESCO and Inditex. Please contact us for more details. Visit http://thirst4water.org/en

Have you ever heard about “Invisible Water?” Okay, let’s learn what it is and why it is important.

China, with 20 percent of the world’s population and only 7 percent of the world’s freshwater resources, is experiencing severe water scarcity. In the 1950s, there were 50,000 rivers in China. Today, there are only 23,000. These rivers have disappeared because they have either dried out or polluted.

Much of the water in China, and other parts of the world, is used to grow food and to manufacture consumer goods. In fact, you eat 3,496 litres every day. Compare that with your domestic consumption of water for drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning and flushing a toilet which is 137 litres.

Food and consumer goods require a lot of more water than most of us realize. Did you know that, we drink 140 litres of water every time we drink a cup of coffee?

Or, what if I also told you that, we eat 15,500 litres every time we buy 1kg of beef? Most of that water is used to grow the roughages that the cow eats.

That isn’t all; did you also know that the average person uses 10 litres of water per minute every time s/he takes a shower? Most of the water we use is invisible because we aren’t aware of its existence in the production of all foods and goods.

So you see, 92 percent of the water we use every day is buried or hidden in the food we eat.Kids who know about this will become more responsible citizens of the world. Once they learn about actions that can be taken to reduce water consumption, kids change their behavior and more than 70 percent become advocates to teach others.

To end the year on a positive note, Thirst is organizing Mission 2015. Participants each pledge to save 2015 liters of water by participating in 5 simple challenges. This is your chance to contribute in a little way to the goal to save water for our planet and future generation. Fellow thirst on Weibo, Weixin, Facebook and we chat at www.thirst4water.org

Thirst is an NGO which is creating a water-wise generation of youth in China. We facilitate free ‘We Water Experience’ workshops and club activities at schools across the country. This program is sponsored by the Foundation for UNESCO and Inditex. Please contact us for more details. Visit http://thirst4water.org/en

Photo: Wikimedia Commons