While cooking up a delicious meal is a great way to satiate taste buds, the activity consumes and leads to wastage of a lot of water. According to one study, about 20 to 30 per cent of water usage in a household comes from the kitchen.
Although cooking is a high-water usage activity, if done smartly, it can help save plenty of this precious natural resource. Here’s how a few simple steps can minimise the usage and wastage of water in your house kitchen:
1) Try and use appliances that help curb wastage of water. Low-flow faucets are of great use when washing utensils, and so are aerators since they decrease the usage of water by almost 30 per cent. You could also try installing motion sensor faucets since they will shut down automatically if there’s nothing under it. This, in the long run, helps conserve a lot of water.
2) Cooking a lengthy meal can turn out to be a high-water usage activity. But you can do our bid by steaming the veggies instead of boiling them. All you need is a steamer insert and your job is done. Not only does steaming use lesser water, it also makes the food healthier by locking in more nutrients that get lost during the boiling process.
3) One-pot meals are winners in every sense. They are far easier to make, consume less water, and help save a lot of water by having only a single pot to clean up afterwards. So your risotto, lasagna and stroganoff are tastier and help save water. How about that for a recipe?
4) While the concept of dishwashers is not much prevalent in India yet, they save far more water than regular hand-washing. For every one minute of a tap running while you wash utensils, around 15 litres of water goes down the drain. A fully-loaded dishwasher, on the other hand, can clean utensils with much lesser water.
5) If you spill stuff in the kitchen, which we all do sometimes, a damp cloth right at the moment will be much better than mopping the entire floor. Don’t let the spill settle in and you can use lesser water to get it out. The same goes for stubborn pans and utensils; soak them in a little water earlier instead of wasting water trying to get the stains out later.
6) That a human body functions more efficiently when it is well hydrated is a fact. But its best to avoid fluids that dehydrate us, such as coffee, soda, alcohol, foods rich in salts and sugary drinks, as they make the brain think you are thirsty, and you end up consuming more water.
We need to rejig and realign our habits around these small actions that we often take for granted. If you are not alarmed by the water crisis yet, measure your water usage in the kitchen now and measure it again after implementing these tactics; the results will be eye-opening.
If you have any tried and tested water-saving techniques in your kitchen, do share them with us. Also, pledge your support today to the Harpic-News18 #MissionPaani campaign as creating awareness and sharing tips can go a long way in averting this crisis.
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