Let’s face it, people who work
in Drinking Water tend to either be obsessive about leaky pipes, or just like
messing with chemicals. Whereas the folk who work in Waste Water have much more
fun. They are earthier, and do exciting things with bacteria and blowers. This
is not just a personal prejudice (back when I did real work, I too was a
wastewater man). I now have irrefutable evidence. Two weeks ago I ran a Scout
group looking at Drinking Water. Last night we did Waste Water, and oh what fun
we had…
Somewhat dangerously we kicked
off with a power point presentation. It included images and facts designed to
highlight why good sanitation is so vital. The opening slides refer to the
Paris Hygiene Edict of 1539, which I somewhat boldly claim as the first ever public
health legislation. This is based on nothing more than the rather ambiguous
fact I have not found any other earlier examples (I also have not really
looked). The discussion almost got side-tracked when I asked who had heard of
Henry VIII (he was on the English throne in 1539). A slightly painful but very
vibrant debate ensued concerning exactly how many wives he had (numbers ranged
from 2 – 8). We eventually got back on track and the microscopic image of a Taenia
solium got the expected laugh (see the slide, all will be clear), followed
by the shock and awe of the subsequent images of sanitation related diseases.
The slides finish with two
pictures of sewers. One a brick lined Victorian structure and the other a
modern sewer. The trick is to set these up so they look like photos, but they
are actually videos. After a few seconds a rather cute rat comes tripping
towards you from the other end of the Victorian sewer. A few seconds later a
(far scankier) rat also appears in the modern sewer. It always goes down a
storm with school kids and last night was no exception.
Having done the slides, the next
activity was to make some sewage of our own. No, not like that. We took a big
bucket, some water and various food items and had enormous fun talking about all
the things that end up in a modern sewer (food, road run-off, industrial
effluents, washing powder, etc). This led, somewhat inevitably, to a
competition to design and build a filter that could ‘treat’ our freshly made
pseudo-sewage. It is astonishing how much fun 20 kids can have with a funnel, a
sieve and sand/gravel. Points were scored on throughput and quality.
Scouts wouldn’t be scouts
without a game and I found a perfect water-based one on YouTube (link below).
The children had to pass a cup of water down the line, pouring it from one cup
to the next but without touching the cup with anything other than their lips.
The winning team was the one that had the most water remaining. It had the
added benefit of ensuring the scout hall floor got its annual washing.
Below are links to all the
resources I used last night. The response to my last Note was so encouraging
(not least because it confirmed that some people do actually read these
diatribes) that I am once again sharing the resources for you to use and abuse.
Feel free to copy, paste a plagiarise as you see fit.
Finally, following my last Note
my former colleague at Thames Water, Karen Simpson (karen.simpson@thameswater.co.uk)
contacted me to tell me about the ‘H20 4 Life’ badge that she created for her
local Brownie/Guide group. Since its launch in 2014, over 4200 badges have been
completed which, using OFWAT approved rules, equates to over 35,000 l/d of
water saved (or over 5 Olympic Swimming pools per year). Karen works in the
Water Efficiency team at Thames so clearly knows her onions when it comes to
water efficiency. If you want to pick her brains directly then I am sure she
would love to hear from you.
Have fun…
Modern Sewer Rat video
Victorian Sewer Rat video
Presentation
Scout game – water
pass-the-parcel
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