Eng4u - My Modest Proposal

Marion Lee

Mrs. Campbell

ENG4U

February 15, 2018

My Modest Proposal

A modest proposal for preventing people all around the world from suffering and dying due to the lack of clean water supply.

In this advanced world we are living in today, we tend to think that everything we have is inevitable. But is this the truth? As Rick Riordan said in his book – The Lightning Thief, “humans [only] see what they want to see”(304). We do not see the reality that there are actually 844 million people in the world who do not have access to clean water; we do not know that a child dies from infection caused by consumption of unclean water every minute and we do not realize that 3.4 million people die from water-related diseases, such as diarrhoea, each year (WaterAid). It is obvious that the problem here is very serious and therefore, I have come up with some solutions to deal with it.

According to statistics by U.S. Geological Survey, clean water accounts for only 3% of the Earth’s water and the remaining 97% is seawater. It is clear that clean water is very limited and nearly all methods that I have thought of are quite impossible. We can neither create clean water nor stop people from using water, as there is still an unlimited supply to people living in the first world. I have finally concluded with a fast, cheap and easy way to solve this problem and would like to humbly propose my own thoughts on this critical issue.

I modestly offer the public to consider having only one bucket of clean water per person each day, and saving their own urine in replacement of water. People should drink, cook and possibly even sell urine to others. Urine is water excreted from our body so it is definitely safe to drink and people can boil it before use to kill germs. The clean water will be for showers and urine can always be reused. Since urine gets more concentrated every time it gets reused and may accumulate toxins that are harmful to our bodies, people may consume the clean water from the bucket and start a new cycle.

My friend Gwendoline drank urine in an experimental camp on a deserted island for a week and she told me that other than the yellowish colour and the strong smell, it tasted just like water. She did not get sick after drinking urine that had been reused for a week. If everyone in the world starts drinking urine instead of water from now on, clean water can be conserved and fewer people would die from diseases caused by the use of unclean water.

Gwendoline had suggested that they could drink seawater as an alternative solution to saving water because, as mentioned before, 97% of the Earth’s water is seawater. However, the leader of the camp explained that kidneys cannot make urine from water that contains more than two percent salt, and since seawater contains approximately three percent of salt, kidneys need more water from the body to dilute the extra salt in order to make urine. In other words, drinking seawater will use water existing in our body and make us feel even thirstier. Therefore, drinking urine instead of seawater might be a better choice.

Coming back to my issue here, there are a few more advantages that I would like to list here to show the value of my proposal.

Firstly, buying clean water cost money but our own body creates urine automatically by the kidneys, which means it does not cost anything at all. Urine we create can be unlimited and reused again and again; therefore, it saves money.

Secondly, people can earn money by selling urine to people who need it. The more they sell, the more they can earn, and this may help improve the living standards of poor people. If they drink more clean water from the bucket to drink, they can generate cleaner and less concentrated urine, which could be sold at a higher price to rich people who are willing to spend money to buy cleaner urine.