Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

6. Clean Water and Sanitation

This goal is closely related to Zero Hunger (Goal 2). In order to preserve and look after the water in the surrounding environment, it is important to decrease the amount of water that is used or consumed.

The Water Cycle

It is important to reuse and recycle water at all times. Therefore, when buildings are built around the campus there are many rules that aim to use the surrounding water more efficiently.

These rules are called “Green Building Standards.” This means that builders need to look at how the water surrounding the building, and other buildings is going to be impacted upon. It also means looking at how water is going to be brought into the building from outside. This means looking at, firstly, where the water is stored, such as a “catchment” as well as how it travels around; for example, through pipes, rivers, streams, or where it comes from; for example, rainfall, or natural springs. The management of water involves many groups of people because water travels through many physical areas and affects many parts of the city. These groups of people include councils, businesses, local people in projects, as well as the general public. Therefore, it is important that all of these people know how water is going to affect them.

Look at the words, “consumed” and “impacted” (upon) in the sentences above.

a.)…it is important to decrease the amount of water that is used or consumed.

b.)…builders need to look at how the water surrounding the building and other buildings is going to be impacted upon.

What part of speech are they?

a. verb b. noun c. adverb d. adjective

Answer

Both of these words are verbs, but they are in the passive form. The passive form gives importance to the person, or thing that has an action performed on it. In both of these sentences the thing that is being acted on is “water. “Water” becomes the subject of the sentence. We are not really interested in how, or why the water is being acted upon, but only that it is being consumed, or impacted upon.

KEY VOCABULARY

1.consumed 2. impacted (upon)

*Note: this vocabulary has been filtered through the Academic Word List from sublist 1 – up to and including sublist 5. Therefore, this course is designed to fit Intermediate Level English language learning students and above