SDG #6 Clean water — Canoeing with a mission
By: Reka Budai
Tags: Canoeing, London, Plastic Pollution, Volunteering, Sdgs

This article is part of a series exploring how everyday citizens can support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) locally through collective action.

Where does our tap water come from?

I have always taken tap water for granted in any place I visited in Europe, and never really considered how clean it is or where it comes from. I always assumed it was drinkable, no more questions. When I moved to London, I asked whether the tap water was fine, just for reassurance, but was probably glugging down the water before the answer came.

We are incredibly fortunate that we do not really have to think about how clean our water is, as this is absolutely not the case in other parts of the world. The WHO estimates that about 800 million people, 10% of the global population do not have clean water close to them. To underline the huge difference across countries: 100% of people in the UK and 98% of EU citizens use safely managed drinking water services, while this number is only 8% for Uganda, which is the lowest scoring country out of the ones measured (World Bank data).

Have you ever wondered where our tap water comes from? In London, one obvious answer could be the Thames, but surely it can not come from that greenish grey river with questionable transparency. However, it does. 70% of London drinking water comes from reservoirs collected upstream from the Thames, while 30% comes from groundwater. Thanks to London’s world class filtration system, the water quality passes 99.9% of quality tests.

What might be surprising though is the state it used to be in. In 1957 the Thames was officially declared biologically dead and no fish survived in its low oxygen levels. Only after the late 60s did it start getting cleaner, thanks to a better sewage system and stricter regulation. Currently there are 125 species of fish, with abundant wildlife of seals and birds (BBC).

Clear blue water

The 6th SDG aims not only to achieve universal access to drinking water, but also to improve water quality by reducing pollution. And this is where London has still some work to do, and why I joined an after work canal clean up. I heard about this event through Thames21, which helps protect the UK’s rivers, canals, ponds and lakes together with their thousands of volunteers.

The event sounded not only useful, but also lots of fun: cleaning some of Limehouse’s canals while paddling on canoes. I was thinking that even if worst comes to worst and no one shows up, it would still be nice to sail off into the sunset together with some ducks. Surprisingly though, about 30 people had gathered at Moo Canoes by the time I arrived. They were all eagerly putting on their water resistant dungarees and life jackets to get down to some canal business.

As I have tried canoeing before, I hardly paid attention to the induction speech, but suddenly I became all ears when the organiser uttered the words ‘rat borne Weil’s disease’, followed by ‘highly unlikely’ and ‘protective clothing’. However, ‘disease’ was enough to reach for my phone and do just a quick Google search on this mysterious disease that I have never heard of, to check how exactly likely is that ‘unlikely’. Googling diseases is never a great idea, and of course ‘organ failure’ did pop up on the first page. Huh, who knew canoeing in a shallow canal can be such a risky adventure — I thought, and put on my outer layers as if we were about to embark on some heroic space travel.

Off we went with our cow-design canoes, and it all resembled like some fun treasure hunting team building activity. I don’t think I ever felt so much joy for finding litter, every single trash brought along some adrenaline: ‘There! There! Let’s go and get it!’. But on a more serious note, unfortunately we did find quite a few things, and sometimes you wonder what the story is for example behind the empty floating laptop bag. We mostly found the usual suspects: drink bottles, cleaning bottles, food wraps — mostly plastic. Looking at the statistics published by Thames21, wet wipes, food wrappers, cotton bud sticks, plastic bottles and takeaway cups came up in the top 5 items they found during their clean ups. Ironically, considering London’s drinking water quality, the most often found bottles were for still water…

Given it was almost Autumn, the sun set quite early, definitely earlier than we wanted to return. The main organisers from Lower Regent’s Coalition waited for us with piles of fresh pizza as soon as we got back with our canoes, bringing back sacks of rubbish. We bonded with the other equally excited volunteers about all the things we have seen and experienced. It was equally surreal and uplifting to be out on the water on a random Wednesday evening, surrounded both by nature and high rise office buildings!

How could you get involved?

If you would like to help Thames21 with their mission to keep our waters clean in and out of London, sign up to one of their volunteer events on their website!