[Guest]

Many a times I have witnessed with great concern the way people drink water from Water-Coolers with vertical Fountain. They drink directly from the fountain without using cups etc. There are millions of Water-Coolers all over the world in Air ports, Shopping centres, Bus and Train Terminals etc etc. After few trials I found that almost 30 % of the water is wasted when we use vertical fountain to drink. One person, on the average tries to drink 150 ML of water one time and 45 ML goes down the drain. If there are 10 Million Water-Coolers all over the world and 10 people drink from one Cooler a day, then we will be wasting 4.5 Million Liters of good quality drinking water every day. There are people dying without water. What can we do to prevent or minimise this abuse of precious water by affluent society? Your inventive ideas please.

[Guest]

Cheap and availabe = waste

Water is not changed onto other things to the degree that we will miss the resource - such as glass, it has 'changed' and so unavailbe as water

In general, we need to make it more available to people that need it. Saving or not wating will not transfer it.

Basically, as a race we care about our own corner and complain about others - we have the resources (unemployed) and means (better use of materials) to make it happen.

A charity where you donate water (funds) marketed properly is a step in the right direction - buy one someone gets one free?? Many wways I won't go into - many peeople worry wbout how funds are spent so it causes a "not worth it" attitude, as funds turn into weapons

We could turn wine into water I guess

The British have found that during water shortages it is best to diluting it

[Brandonb]

The British have found that during water shortages it is best to diluting it

LOL! that was clever. I'll remember that the next time we have a drought and the local police try to issue tickets for wasting water.

"But officer, it only looks like I am wasting clean drinking water to hydrate my lawn! When actually, I heavily diluted it using that hose hooked up to the side of my house over there."

"Oh, well then, allow me to dilute the paper ticket I am issuing, with even more ink as I add an extra zero digit to the fine." <_<

As for the original statement about people dying without water. The world revolves around incentives. Make it worth while to do what you are requesting and it will be done.

However, I don't believe in international charity when it does not involve a natural disaster. Freely giving away resources to a country that is already able to produce them actually makes the problem worse, since it eliminates their incentive to develop and improve their conditions. It destroys all incentives for a country to invest to construct refineries and improve themselves if they can get the readily available resource for cheaper than what they can invest to begin producing it.

The end result is that the country becomes reliant and the givers of the goods become slave owners of an entire country. Or, as is usually the way things work, the corrupt leaders of the country see this and understand that since they control the import of the free goods, they control the power. So they implement taxes on the importation of these 'free' goods. Which forces the country as a whole into further poverty.

And as for minimizing abuse... Why? It's the most abundant resource on the planet. And it's not going anywhere. What qualifies as abuse? Is that water park that you like to go to every summer abusing the resource?

But if you are worried about the water coolers alone, then why not just make the water coolers more efficient? Because it's not in the best interest of the company selling that water cooler. The more waste there is, the more often a new water jug will need to be purchased for replacement. They make more money from the waste of water and recycling of the plastic jugs. Which means that the production of the water is cheap and the resource is painfully abundant. The company put in the money to develop the refineries, now they get to reap the rewards. There's nothing wrong with that. Other countries need to have the incentive to do the same.