‘Water Without Waste’ campaign meets Pondy promenaders

If you were offered an empty one liter plastic bottle for Rs 6 and asked to walk 200 meters to fill it with clean drinking water, would you choose this option over paying Rs 20 for a filled one liter bottle of water on the spot? This question was one that the ‘Water Without Waste’ campaign was trying to answer in its recent awareness campaign to draw attention to the massive amount of waste produced by bottling drinking water. Human behavior and consciousness-raising were at the heart of the campaign, which launched online on March 22 and culminated in a three-day interactive art installation along the promenade in Pondicherry from March 29-31.

‘Water Without Waste’ was the latest campaign run by AmrutDhara (‘amrut/amrit’ meaning ‘heavenly life giving drink’ and ‘dhara’ a Hindi/Sanskrit word for ‘flow’), founded by Minhaj Ameen (Aurovilian), Akshay Roongta and Sandeep Jaiswal, whose mission is to “start a movement which will bring behavior change in people through awareness campaigns while providing a sustainable alternative to bottled water”. The campaign launched on Facebook, where anyone could sign up to ‘Take a Pledge’ to carry their own bottle with them while traveling and not purchase bottled water. Each day for one week, a lucky winner was randomly selected and a prize of a metallic water bottle was given.

At the end of that week, AmrutDhara volunteers took to the streets. Three art installations, conceived and designed by Saketh Singh and his team at Play Design Studio at Aurelec, were erected on the Beach Road in Pondicherry. The abstract pieces represented the negative impacts of bottled water on air and on water. Hovering around the installations, volunteers attracted passers-by with a simple question: “Do you remember the time when you could refill water at common taps?” Most nodded yes, of course. But today, the volunteers continued, it is more common, and often most necessary, to purchase bottled water. Volunteers then asked further questions before launching into the detriments of bottled water, highlighting the environmental consequences, the questionable quality of bottled water, and the unreasonable expense of water.

It was at this point that the volunteers offered people the choice of either purchasing bottled water or purchasing an empty bottle and then filling it with clean drinking water nearby. Most people seemed to choose the latter option.

Over the course of three days, the volunteer team interacted with dozens of passers-by, including school children, media people, hotel owners, and even the Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry who was out on his evening walk. The response was overwhelmingly positive. One man from Pune took to the idea with passionate frustration. He and his wife and daughter were on a holiday in Pondicherry, and had had no other option but to purchase bottled water. “In just the past three days,” he said, “we’ve purchased 30 bottles of water between us. It’s unacceptable.”

The team continually monitored the impact of the initiative. During the debrief at the end of the first day, they decided to promote higher quality water bottles that could be reused longer. People visiting the water stall on subsequent days could purchase their own, sturdy water bottle, and a sticker to put on it that declared, “I am a change agent!”

In the final debriefing, the team assessed that using street art, especially large-scale installations, to engage with people was extremely successful. Some of the most passionate engagements occurred during the installation process, which piqued curiosity. The repetition of three art installations along the promenade also helped, as people were continuously confronted with the issue. The team also learned several lessons from the campaign. For instance, communication should be simplified, and text reduced in favor of more graphics and photographs.

Before survey results emerged, Min could already spot some trends in the overwhelmingly affirmative responses to the first three questions asked: ‘Do you trust water coming from a large water container?’; ‘Are you aware of issues around plastic waste and bottled water?’; and ‘Would you use a service that provides you with clean drinking water?’ “It’s a good sign,” says Min, “because if people feel that they can trust water from a water service, then that trust is something we can build on.” Indeed, the results of the survey showed that such a water service has potential. While only 35% of respondents carry their own drinking water bottles, 90% are aware of plastic-related issues. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they would value a service where they could fill up a bottle with clean drinking water.

Despite a few setbacks (the installations took longer to construct than anticipated, and one of the installations vanished on the second night), AmrutDhara organizers are celebrating a successful campaign that worked toward their goal of awareness-building around the issue of bottled water. They hope to learn from this campaign and launch it in other cities across India.