The New Age of Austerity: I can't escape it, even during a snap vacation

On Monday (at my wife's insistence, of course), I loaded the car for a snap vacation (Geez, anything to escape Deforest City's heat and humidity!) and posts about austerity abruptly ended.

(I think it was during such a heat wave that a local writer - short, good-looking; you know the drill - in our boiling city coined the well-known phrase 'I would have got here sooner but I was stuck to the vinyl seats in my van.')

However, the last thing I threw into the back seat was Monday's London Free Press and as soon as I opened it I realized no one will escape The New Age of Austerity.

(It may be a big, long, important age. Note the capital letters!)

Monday's headline: What a watery waste.

Though knee deep in water in Fenelon Falls I learned that Ontarians who draw water from the Great Lakes 'are wasting more than 580 billion litres a year' for four reasons.


["Waste not, want not": photos GH]

A recent report suggests we could conserve by doing the following:

- 213 billion litres (a third of the amount listed) by using high-efficiency toilets

- 162 billion by upgrading old washing machines

- 138 billion by reducing lawn watering and buying drought-resistant plants

- 65 billion by using low-flow showerheads

And in my opinion we're just scratching the surface.


["It only looks like we're surrounded by water at times"]

Really, no mention was made of the amount we use washing our cars or rinsing the driveway afterward, taking long showers, keeping golf courses and other sport fields lush or despoiling through the use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals.

Perhaps we should consider the following ideas before The New Age makes them mandatory:

- install a high-efficiency toilet, washing machine and showerhead

- wash the car only on your wedding day

- check out the price of composting toilets, then install one and use it regularly

- forget the grass and plant periwinkle

- play golf the way it was meant to be played, in rough conditions in the Scottish Highlands with a sheep-skin ball filled with your wife's hair (or husband's, if you play for the LPGA)

(Really, we're so spoiled today. If we see a weed we seek a better lie).

***

Tell me these ideas won't save water and fit in with austerity measures.

.