Emma mentioned that the theme for this year’s Blog Action Day is Water, I got really interested. I agree with her that in the countries that we were brought up in, where water is a scarce resource (we are dependent on our surrounding countries for water in Singapore). I was taught to save water on a daily basis. From automatic water taps, to flushing systems and even educated in the ways in which the government has done to “create” water for its citizens.
One very unique thing that Singapore has done is to “create” water from the water we have used through reverse osmosis – it was marketed as NEWater to encourage all of us to accept this idea. Initially it was a really disgusting thought to most of us; imagine drinking water which you have just flushed down the toilet! Some of us even say it has a different taste to the regular water we used to drink. But it has become a very normal thing to us now, and more than 50% of our water we get is mixed together with imported, desalinated as well as water from our very very small reservoirs (they look more like ponds in Canada).
I have never really thought about my experience with Sustainability in Singapore till now.. Bear with me, I am trying to look into other things as well! Anyway, what I thought was that despite NEWater being an excellent proposition in being more sustainable and less reliant on other nations for water, it was not a successful marketing strategy. Although we were given the opportunity to voice our opinions and polls were taken about the issue, we were not given a choice as to whether we support the idea at all. Schools bring student groups on tours at the NEWater plant every year, educating them of the advanced technology that provides us with this precious resource – this could come really close to “greenwashing” in my opinion.
