Dear LPG,

I hope that your readers don’t think that my only fixation is on nothing but clean hands.  I recently found out all about Global Handwashing Day and thought it would be a good excuse to remind our readers of the importance of keeping them germ free, but it also occurs to me that we can’t do that without water.   In my world, I wrote that message yesterday but while I am again in a writing mood and, with a bit more to say, this message has been written well in advance.

I have just noticed that there is a World Water day and, if LPG has been able to post this on the day I have requested, what I have to say will coincide with that celebration.

If you ask most people in the western world about water, they will tell you that it flows when you turn the tap on and I have to say that I looked at my two most recent water bills and realised that they were noticeably higher over the past couple of years.  I have to put that down to all my extra hand washing during the pandemic. 

But we often forget that we only have so much of the stuff and that our supply keeps repeating variations of the same journey to provide us with the hot and cold, virtually never-ending supply that is so available to us in the UK, at the twist of a tap.

I sometimes think that we see too many of those charity appeal adverts that try to highlight the problems that so many countries in the world still have when it comes to accessing the type of water that we take for granted because, just like that water that comes out of our taps, we are so used to them that we see but don’t really look properly. I am not trying to appeal on any particular water charity’s behalf, but I found it really sobering when I took a look at the statistics. 

So having looked online, I would like to pass on some of what I found because as we, in the western world think nothing of going to the fridge for a cool glass of water on a hot day while so many of us see it as in inconvenience when torrents of the stuff decide to fall from the sky and interrupt our sunshine, too many of the people of the world still don’t have enough safe water to do anything with. 

KC, Brockley

KC offers some world water reality, and a little information to remind us of those all-important water saving tips we are often told about

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