Taps are forbidden in Sadhana Forest

The work of Sadhana Forest is well known. Yearly, more than 1,000 volunteers come for shorter or longer periods to learn about water conservation, rainwater harvesting, earth dam building, afforestation, alternative energies and many more ‘green’ practices. “Recently we’ve started giving green-practice workshops,” says Yorit. “We have been inviting people from Tamil Nadu to come here for a weekend to learn about water conservation. The outcome was a yatra, a tour to lands north of Chennai owned by some of the participants. We helped them to redesign their land to optimize it for rainwater harvesting, and our JCB operator, who has been working with us for many years, has gone there and started the work.” Another outreach work was helping with the reforestation of Omkareshwar Island, an island in the river Narmada which has the shape of the Sanskrit syllable “AUM” and which is sacred to Shiva.

What, exactly, Sadhana Forest does at home to encourage water conservation is less well-known. How do these 1,000 volunteers deal with water? “Very sparingly,” laughs Yorit, who together with her husband Aviram started Sadhana Forest 11 years ago. “Here we choose to conserve water at every step.” She explains that Sadhana Forest has only dry compost toilets where water is only used to wash. Grey water is used for gardening. For dishwashing, the volunteers use four buckets of water. The first one is for rinsing the dirt using ash from the wood stoves and coconut husk for scrubbing; then the dish is plunged into the next bucket, followed by an immersion in a third one which holds a vinegar solution, to ensure that all bacteria have left. The dish is then finally rinsed in a fourth bucket. “So for a 100 dishes, we only use 40 litres of water,” says Yorit. The waste water, of course, is used for gardening.

Another ingenious system is used for hand washing and for showers. “You won’t find a tap in Sadhana Forest!” says Yorit. “That would be the end of our experience, as people are used to leaving taps open and keeping the water running. Instead, we have water stations for washing our hands.” The system consists of a water barrel and two jugs. One jug, attached to a nearby tree, has a hole in the bottom. The other one is used for scooping water from the barrel and pouring it into the jug with the hole. Water drips down and that’s used to wash your hands. “You learn very fast that half a jug is enough to wash your hands 3 times,” says Yorit. An immense coconut tree is the silent beneficiary of all the water used.

While the water barrel for the hand wash is close at hand, the same cannot be said for the shower system. Here, the water source is a hand pump which has deliberately been put at quite a distance from the shower rooms. “People have to fill their bucket and carry it all the way to the showers, a distance of 50 metres at least. That’s a heavy load. In this way, people quickly realise that water is precious,” explains Yorit. While most volunteers use a jar to shower themselves, for the persistent there is the possibility to empty the bucket into another bucket which has holes in the bottom, hoist it up by using a rope and then enjoy a – by then well-needed – shower. “But most people soon conclude that half a bucket will do,” says Yorit.

To her regret, these water conservation methods haven’t made inroads in Auroville. “We would love it if the schools would change their water systems, and start experimenting with different ways of washing hands. It’s easy to teach children, and important to do so.”