Thursday 4 September 2008

What the Holy Land can learn from the Land Down Under

There are plenty of things Australia could pick up from Israel. Ciggie breaks in movies for example, frying things more, big-ass salads with a loaf of bread and a bucket of butter on the side, regular trance parties in the forest, selling alcohol in every corner shop… the list goes on.

Israel has some vital things to learn from Australia too.

The one that stands out to me at the moment is to saving water. The Holy Land, like the Great Southern Land, is in the midst of a profound drought. Advertising campaigns have started, which is great, featuring a mildly attractive woman who quickly ceases to be when her skin dries up and starts cracking off as she explains that Israel has ‘no, absolutely no water to waste.’ There are big billboards over all major cities explaining to the public that the water level on Lake Kinneret, the country’s main water source, is dangerously low.

Awesome. Good work. It’s a start at least.

What I want to know is, why then, when I walk home every day, do I see pavements being washed with water, leaky pipes flooding the streets, sprinklers showering the park in the middle of the day? Speaking of which, why are we trying to make the desert into England anyway? Green fluffy grass isn’t quite native flora in the Judean hills.

At least no one here ever washes their cars.

I advocate bringing in some of the hardcore water restrictions from Australia. First and foremost, no ridiculous wasting of water. Sounds crazy right. Mmm… Okay, we’ve gotta stop wasting water… how do we do this… umm… STOP WASTING WATER DAMMIT! Listen to flaky-face woman!

  • Don’t wash your pavement. It’s concrete. It doesn’t need to be washed. Sweep it if you must.
  • If a pipe is leaking, fix it; don’t just let the water flood the city.
  • Program sprinkler systems to function at night, not during the day when all the water is being evaporated before it even touches the plants.
  • And - consider growing plants that are native to the environment. Sure grass is pretty, but maybe its just England’s reward for having to put up with rubbish weather.

That’s it. I’m translating the list into Hebrew and sticking it on every telegraph pole I walk past from now on. It’s gonna be Lan’s Little Community Action Project For The Week.

Anyone interested in volunteering can contact me by email.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lan, this drove me insane when I was living in Israel. If you really wanna freak out, go to any mens mikva in an chareidi area any day of the week between the hours of 5 and 9.. They leave the showers on FULL BLAST (as in its actually painful to stand underneath it) - sometimes as many as 10 showers on full blast for hours on end.

Maybe u can do an expose?

1:17 am  

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