Saskatoon Muslim school cuts down water consumption by 500L per day

A group of students atSaskatoon MisbahSchool have come up with a plan that could save their school thousands of litres of water-use every year.

It was part of a city-wide program called Student Action for a Sustainable Future, where hundreds ofstudentswere tasked to create projects looking at waste, water, food, transportation, biodiversity and energy.

"We chose this topic water conservation because water is really sacred in our religion," Grade 8 student, Nada Emara, told CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning.

"We see that our school really wastes a lot of water because we make wudu which is this spiritual cleansing before prayer," she added.

• U of R adds special sinks for Muslim students

Wudu is performed by Muslims before prayer as a type of ritual purification.The procedure includes hands, mouth, nostrils, arms, headand feet to be washed in water.

According to Emara, the students conducted unique audits by placing buckets under 21 taps to measure how much water was used during one prayer session. The group estimated that each student used about one litre of water per cleansing session.

"We do this five times a day for all the five prayers," said group member, Hafsa Asim. "[The prayer] just takes five minutes and one litre is too much for that."

Encourageclassmates to reduce water use

Asim saidby makingannouncements every day before prayerencouraging their classmates to minimize their water usage, they were able to reduce their water consumption by about 530 litres of water per day.

"We're like, 'Guys, we're wasting so much water. Let's do a better job. Let's save the environment," said Emara.

When the project was completed, thegroup wrote a letter to the public school board urging them to invest in low-flow water taps and automatic water taps.

Emara added that they even raised $300 to kickstart the initiative.