Category Archives: Green

Go Green in 4 Weeks!

  Four weeks doesn’t sound like a long time, but by making small changes every day for a month you will be able to tackle the task of Going Green with ease. WEEK 1 Day 1: Start with you paper. While there are many household items you can recycle, start with a commonly used material. Recycling paper is easy because it does not require anything much else but sorting. Simply contact Mondy Paper Pick-up and find out more about their paper pickup scheme. Day 2: Bring your own bag. Elimination the need for plastic shopping bags is a great way to reduce waste and will save you money. There is no need to buy one of those reusable bags that the shops have for sale, as you probably have a suitable bag at home already. Day 3: Turn of the tap. Make sure that all your taps completely close every time you use them. Leaking taps waste litres and litres of water unnecessarily. Change your habits and don’t let taps run in the bathroom, while you are brushing your teeth, shaving or in the kitchen, when preparing food. Day 4: Eliminate paper/plastic cups from your life. Have your favourite coffee … Continue reading

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How to make your Harvested Rainwater pay for itself.

After some frequent rain in the Eastern Cape the water tanks are all filled to the brim; yet not enough rain has fallen to fill up our dams and alleviate the water restrictions. What to do with all that water then? Your garden doesn’t need any water now and your swimming pool is probably full and not being used as frequently in this icy weather. Why not let your rainwater harvesting system pay for itself? By using your harvested rain water instead of municipal water, you not only save money on your water bill but also on your sewerage costs. Municipalities charge for sewerage based only on the volume (number of kilolitres) of water that you consume. You are charged for the amount of water that has run through the water meter and the same goes for your sewerage charge. If less water runs through your meter and rather from your full water tank, the lower your water AND sewerage charge will be. What to do with all that rainwater in your tank? • Pump it through your whole household • Toilet flushing • Laundry washing machine The installation can be as simple as a pump connected to the tank … Continue reading

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Calculation of average capacity of water supply dams.

According to Kupido Baron, spokesperson for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, the rain was just in time, as the average level of the dams was very close to to 30%. This would have meant that the Municipality would make drastic decisions regarding the water scarcity and that quotas/contingents could be implemented. The average level of the dams before the rain was at 31.3%. How the average capacity of dams is calculated: Each dam has a full supply capacity expressed as a volume in Mega liters (Ml). The percentages that are reported weekly represent the volume of water left in each dam, expressed as a percentage of that particular dam’s full volume. The volume for each dam is different. One cannot add up the percentages and divide by five. The volume left in all the dams (example 96 906 Ml) is then expressed as a percentage of the total volume (277 401 Ml) if all the dams were full. Therefore 96 906 Ml divided by 277 401 Ml gives 34.93%. Have your rainwater harvesting system installed by Water Rhapsody and become independent of supply dams. Contact us for a quotation.

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I will die for water

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Lewis Pugh on Karoo Fracking

This is the content of a short speech given on Friday night in Cape Town by Lewis Gordon Pugh OIG (a.k.a. the Human Polar Bear) about the proposed fracking for gas in the Karoo, by Shell. He received a sustained standing ovation !

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Get the frack out of my Karoo

Oh good, we’ve found a new way to ruin the environment Matthew Du Plessis: “Fracking” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. In the good old days, it was a wholesome substitute for an unprintable expletive – used to its highest glory and fullest effect in the television series Battlestar Galactica. Hearing Starbuck curse was an object lesson in the poetry of vloeking. It was from the heart. The new meaning of “fracking” doesn’t come from the heart. Instead, it’s a punch to the gut. The word “fracking” is a convenient abbreviation of the phrase “hydraulic fracture”. I’ll tell you more about that in a second.

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Radio Interview with Water Rhapsody’s Founder

We are proud to share this interview with Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor on SAFM  with everybody. After reading through this, we hope the necessity of harvesting rainwater, specially through the Water Rhapsody System, will become not only a consideration to you, but a must-have to all households and businesses. Try to make use of natural water supply to help keep you going during the times when water is scarce. Radio Interview on SAFM 104 – 107 with Karabo  14hr30. 18 January 2011 TRANSCRIPT NOT VERBATIM Are we doing enough to control flooding?  On the line we have Jeremy the founder of Water Rhapsody.  Welcome Jeremy, are we doing enough to control flooding? J Flooding should not be seen as a bad thing.  Water that reaches the sea from rivers is not wasted water.  Estuaries need floods to be able to function as estuaries. Rivers need to have the mouths to the sea scoured from flooding which makes a flood a good thing.  Estuaries are places where sea fish swim during floods to breed and spawn to procreate more, and because of over extraction of water from rivers, there is between three and four percent of fish left in the sea that there … Continue reading

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What is Climate Change?

Outline of the potential problem of climate change and its cause as understood by the South African Weather Service The climate of the world varies from one decade to another, and a changing climate is natural and expected. However, there is a concern that the human industrial and development activities of the past two centuries have caused changes over and above natural variation… What is climate change? Climate change is the natural cycle through which the earth and its atmosphere are going to accommodate the change in the amount of energy received from the sun. The climate goes through warm and cold periods, taking hundreds of years to complete one cycle. Changes in temperature also influence the rainfall, but the biosphere is able to adapt to a changing climate if these changes take place over centuries. Unfortunately, human intervention is currently causing the climate to change too fast. (Climate models predict that the mean air temperature over South Africa will increase by an estimated 2°C over the next century.) Plants and animals may not be able to adapt as quickly to this rapid climate change as humans can, and therefore the whole ecosystem is in danger. What causes climate change? … Continue reading

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Grahamstown: Limited Water

“Serious water shortage in Grahamstown causes some areas  to have access to water only one hour per day. It is especially rural settlement Vukani that are being hit by this the worst. During a public meeting earlier this week held by The Movement for Unemployed People, it became clear that the only hour water would be available is during the middle of the night. Around 50 people, mostly woman, from the Vukani Location attended the meeting. Prof. Denis Hughes, the Director for Water Research at Rhodes University acted as chairperson for the meeting. Both the Makana Municipality’s municipal manager, Me. Ntombi Baart and Mr. Dabula Njilo, director of Technical and Infrastructural Services were expected to attend the meeting to explain to the public what the state of the situation is, but none showed up.” Die Burger, 26 Nov’10 – Anna-Karien Otto Let this not be said from your town one of these days. Try to start changing your lifestyle and think different about water and the usage thereof. Contact Water Rhapsody to give you a quote on greywater re-use, recycling your pool’s backwash water, saving the amount of toilet flushing-water, being prepared to harvest rainwater etc. Do what you can … Continue reading

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