Innovation: Only 14 year old Rishabh saved 70 lakh liters of water with the idea of installing aerator in the tap.
New Delhi. Water is life. Without water everything is deserted. We have been hearing these things since childhood but it had a deep impact on 14 year old Rishabh. To deal with the water crisis, Rishabh adopted such a method, which saved 70 lakh liters of water in just one year. Not only this, water bills in homes also reduced by 30 percent.
Rishabh Prashobh, a 14-year-old student of Class 9 at the National Academy for Learning, Bengaluru, has started the water mission. Under this, Rishabh installed ‘aerator’ in the taps of two hotels, his school and his housing society. Aerators are small mechanical devices that are fitted into taps. These mix air with water and ensure that the flow of water coming from the tap remains constant, no matter what the pressure. If an aerator is installed in a tap that supplies 15 liters of water per minute, it reduces the water supply to six liters per minute. These devices can save 1,274 liters of water in a month.
In 2019, Rishabh participated in a social initiative of ‘1Million for 1Billion’ (1M1B), a United Nations recognized organization. Here he studied various issues related to the environment. The Better India has published an article on this topic. Rishabh told the website that he had read about many issues like air pollution, but water shortage was a problem which he himself has seen in Bengaluru. Many ponds here are drying up and many houses are also facing water problems. After this, to understand the problem at the grassroots level, Rishabh talked to many organizations, activists and water-conservators in Bengaluru. He understood that with the increasing population, the demand for water is also increasing, but its supply is much less than the demand. Therefore, the only solution to this problem is to reduce water consumption.
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Through aerator, it is possible to save 3 to 4 liters of water per minute from the kitchen sink.
When Rishabh did research, he found that at the domestic level, the best way to reduce water consumption is to fit aerators in water taps. Generally, our kitchen sink and bathroom taps release 6 liters of water per minute and with the help of aerator it can be reduced to 3 or 4 litres. To test it, Rishabh installed an aerator in his grandmother’s house in Bengaluru. He could not install an aerator in his house because in his building, water bills for 17 houses are collected. Which is distributed among everyone. In such a situation, they are not able to accurately estimate the savings in water and reduction in bills.
Water bill in grandmother’s house reduced by 30 percent in just one month
According to Rishabh, after just one month of fitting one aerator, we saw a reduction of up to 30% in the water bill of grandmother’s house. Earlier his bill used to be around Rs 340 but it came down to Rs 250. After this he contacted the residents association of his housing society and gave this solution. Then two aerators were fitted in each apartment. Each household paid for the aerator, which cost about Rs 300 per unit. Rishabh says that this reduced the water consumption in the society within a year and 20 lakh liters of water was saved. After this Rishabh contacted two Marriott hotels in Cochin, Kerala. Here too, both the hotels saved about 50 lakh liters of water in the year itself.
Target to save one crore liters of water this year
On his success, Rishabh contacted his school principal Indira Jayakrishnan. Rishabh’s idea has taken the school’s initiative further. In 2021, Rishabh hopes to take his initiative to more schools, hotels, theaters and malls across the city. Their aim is to help save one crore liters of water in the city.
