NZ may be a small country, but in the wider world, what we do, use and consume affects lives everywhere. So I'm on a mission to see how we're treating our backyards, both here and further afield. What are we doing to be cleaner and greener? What do we need to change? And what does the future hold? So join me, Te Radar, as I go global. Don't worry ` I'll plant plenty of trees to offset the travel. Now, where's my passport? Copyright TVNZ Access Services 2013 You could say that this dripping tap is a wet-aphor ` that's a metaphor about water, a substance that you and I use hundreds of litres of every day, and not just for washing, drinking and flushing the loo. Water use is often invisible. It may be news to you that it takes 300 litres of water to make a newspaper, and 500g of coffee takes 11,000 litres to produce. That makes my morning routine... pretty moist. So it's crucial that the water we do have is kept as pure as possible. Here in Hinakura, water issues are at boiling point. It does feel very Country Calendar, this particular moment, doesn't it? It does feel very Country Calendar, this particular moment, doesn't it? BOTH LAUGH Grant and his dogs are guardians of the river, because, he says, someone has to stand their ground on water purity. We've had a lot of rain, so the river looks a little bit discoloured. Is it like that most of the year? It does, really. It only runs clear after there's been no rain for about four to five weeks. Settle down! 10 years ago, it was nothing like this. It ran clear most of the time. This spot we used to call the trout pool, and there'd be trout jumping all over the place. There's just no fish in the river at all at the moment. And no towns putting sewage into it ` there's no industry; there's only agriculture. The intensification of that agriculture over the last decade, primarily with the increase in beef and lamb prices, it made farmers focus more on that intensive style of farming, and of course, that's brought the chemicals and the run-off and put the pressure on the land. How do you fix that? How do you fix that? To me, it's pretty simple. It's called a fence. If we fence off our rivers, and if we farm with a far more of an environmental consciousness, which is putting on less fertiliser, controlling fertilisers, looking at erosion, planting the slipping hills, then we will fix this within a space of five years,... if we do it starting now. If we leave this for another 10 years, it's gonna take us 20 years to turn it around. There are probably people who look at this river and think, 'Well, we're in the middle of nowhere. 'No one ever sees it. So what?' 'No one ever sees it. So what?' 'What's the point?' Exactly. 'No one ever sees it. So what?' 'What's the point?' Exactly. So who are you to come and say, 'Hey, stop,' you know, 'Stop doing that.' Exactly right. Exactly right. You must be one of the least popular men in the district. I was. Oh, they hated my guts. But, you know, I just couldn't watch the destruction that was occurring. And also it was affecting me personally, because my property is, as you can see, it's surrounded by the river. And so anything that happens on the river affects me personally. Yeah. Here we have a really good hole in the river that I use to draw my` my drinking water out of, and my household water. But there's a dead cow washed up in the debris there. If it was a decent day for eeling, I suspect we'd either catch something because they'd all be here or have an appalling chance cos they'd have gorged themselves on the dead cow. Eels can't even live in the river. There's no oxygen in the water. The mana of NZ, of Aotearoa, is in its fresh water and its environment. This is the mana of our country. We've gotta do something to look after it, otherwise it'll go. One of the problems with water pollution is that often, you can't see the chemical reactions, so you can't see the damage. If you've ever marvelled at the colours of a rainbow in a puddle, then you've been seduced... by pollution. Oil and water don't mix, but water dissolves more stuff than any other liquid. H2O is made up of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. But when organic matter ends up in the water, it adds nitrogen, which binds with the oxygen and so makes it unavailable for fish to breathe ` which is partly why NZ's longfin eel has ended up on the endangered list. Baby eels have a homing device, so they only return to the river their parents came from and nowhere else. If that river has no oxygen available, they'll still swim up it until they die. We'd probably worry more about the welfare of the eel if they were perhaps more traditionally beautiful... like a gurnard. I think it's one thing for a population of eels to run out of food. But if they can't actually breathe, that's a pretty significant problem for them. You can't generally look at a river and go, 'Oh, there's no oxygen in that,' because it just looks like water,... even though, I suppose, technically, it isn't water, because water is H2O. If you take out the oxygen, then what do you get left? You just get, sort of, just H. Little bit of light reading. This is one of our regional council's draft policy statement on environmental matters, and you think, 'Gosh, this is gonna cover everything.' There's coastal areas, there's indigenous biological diversity, water management values, discharges ` a lot of talk of discharge. I felt, when I got this, that this would be singularly the most boring document I've ever had the misfortune to lug around. But I found it absolutely fascinating. READS: 'The sand, shingle, shell, driftwood or dead seaweed 'shall be for private use only and not for sale or exchange.' So you can sell or exchange live seaweed, but dead seaweed ` verboten. Tell you what ` you can keep your Harry Potters and your hobbits. This is a magical document,... with very good cartography. And while they don't please everyone, these documents exist for a reason. PLANE ENGINE HUMS The mighty Mississippi River is one of the world's great waterways. Unfortunately, it's also so polluted that its outflow creates a massive dead zone when it hits the Gulf of Mexico. While the BP oil disaster made global headlines for the environmental chaos it caused in the same waters, the dead zone barely rates a mention. Mississippi River keeper Paul believes that needs to change. So, some of this water may well have come from as far away as Canada? That's true. 44% of North America drains, uh, through the Mississippi River Valley, all the way down to the centre of America, basically, and all out through here. It's kind of like the aorta of the country, in a way. There's right around 200 major petrochemical facilities between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on the river. All the big names ` Exxon, Mobil, Dow, Monsanto, everybody you can think of. And the water, of course, is our lifeblood. It sustains the communities and the economy. Some people would maybe think of it more like a colon. (CHUCKLES) Right. Yeah. And of course, now we're facing real problems because it's been treated that way. because it's been treated that way. Yeah. So down here there's a discharge. There is. The sewage treatment plant for the northern part of Baton Rouge, they've been having lots of trouble keeping within their discharge permit and so... come out here a few times when it's just basically raw sewage coming out into the river. Right. That's far from ideal. Right. That's far from ideal. Yeah, no, so it's no good. Cities for the last couple of thousand miles are discharging stuff into it ` agriculture nutrients. What happens when it hits the Gulf of Mexico? Well, these nutrients, uh, fuel the growth of algae, and then algae is eaten by the phytoplankton. When it dies, it settles down to the bottom and bacteria eat it. And when the bacteria eat it, the water gets so deoxygenated that the sea life either flees from the area or dies if it can't. People might assume a river full of nutrients is a good thing. Right. It would seem that way, but it can cause some really bad problems. I think part of the problem is that you can't see the dead zone. It's just water. It's just water. It just` Right. It looks like the ocean. But` It's not a different colour or...? It's not a different colour or...? No, no. You can't really` can't see any difference. But then when the fishermen go out, you know, there's no shrimp, there's no crabs, there's no fish. How do you go about starting to clean up a river of this size? Once it's in the water, only so much you can do. But if we can get people to not put it in in the first place, that's really where you can make a big difference. LAZY MUSIC It's almost incomprehensible to imagine having a dead zone ` certainly not one the size of` of the one that they have in the Gulf of Mexico ` anywhere in NZ. We got all het up about an algal bloom. Maybe we just need to think about our rivers a little bit more. I'm in Peru's Sacred Valley, under the Chicon glacier, where there's double trouble with water. 70% of Peru's glaciers could vanish in the next decade, and what little water does flow downstream is poisoning the locals. I'm with John, who is trying to turn this ice water back into nice water. When you think of Peru, you think of the Andes, of crystal-clear mountain streams flowing down to the sea. It's not really like that. It's not really like that. Well, it is like that. Unfortunately, that crystal-clear water is full of horrible things that make you very sick, mainly because of agriculture and population boom. About 80% of children are malnourished, because of the terrible water quality that they have. So the most effective way to reduce child malnutrition is filtering water in someone's home. Buenos dias. Buenos dias. Buenos dias. So here's our water filter. So here's our water filter. Before the water filter, what did she use? Antes el filtro, que usabas? Tapira. Tapira. Just, uh, water from the tap. They get sickness? Siempre habia. Siempre habia. Siempre habia. Microbios. Microbios. There's microbials. At any language, really, 'microbes' translates... (LAUGHS) as not a good thing. How does she feel about the glacier disappearing? (MUMBLES) Que agua vamos a tener? It's disappearing, so what water are they gonna drink? Not rainwater. Not rainwater. No. Agua de lluvia, no? (LAUGHS) No hay lluvia tambien. De que lluvia? There isn't any rain neither, so... There isn't any rain neither, so... No. John and I are putting our bodies on the line to prove his filters work, via a cup of bean tea. Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias. Cheers. Muchas gracias. Cheers. Cheers. GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC Bean tea. That's lovely. It's like, um, caramel popcorn. Delicious. Delicious. Yup. Really good. The glacier might vanish but not people's water worries. So John's working with charity ProWorld, making basic terracotta water filters ` life-changing pottery that costs about the same as a copy of this program on DVD. I'm failing to understand how exactly this filters water. So the filter has a number of pores that you can't really see. And so when you put water in the top of the bucket, it just seeps through, um, slowly so that it's well filtered. so that it's well filtered. That would explain why it's so light. Exactly. And then we coat it in colloidal silver. Colloidal silver kills the microbacterial contaminants that are in the water that are too small to be filtered out by the pores. Gosh, that seems... remarkably simple. In the early '70s in Nicaragua, Potters for Peace developed this design, and they're a wonderful non-profit who help other non-profits around the world, um, use this technology and produce filters, uh, locally. A lot of potters who aren't doing anything like are also non-profit, because no one will buy their... terrible clay mugs. BOTH LAUGH They'd want to join Potters for Peace and get involved with this. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Gosh. We make all our water filters here. The clay is local. We buy the buckets locally. We make everything locally, which is important for us in terms of generating local jobs. Where does the sawdust fit in? Where does the sawdust fit in? The sawdust is mixed in with the clay, and then when the filter is fired in our kiln, the sawdust burns little, tiny holes in the filter. And that's what makes it porous. This is Ernestina, our water filter project coordinator. Buenas tardes. Buenas tardes. Mm. Buenas tardes. Anos atras, asi 15 anos... 15 years ago, the river was clean. She used to go to the river with her brothers and sisters, friends, take a load of bottles down there. They would start swimming and collect fish in the bottles. They now call it a dead river. There are no fish that live in that river. No, ya no vamos por que... No, ya no vamos por que... When people do swim in the river, um, they get these spots all over their skin. So she doesn't let her children swim in the river, obviously. No. Rightly so. So what's the Spanish word for 'dead river'? MAN: Rio muerto. Clean water is not something we generally worry about until disaster strikes, and then we're left clutching at straws. Fortunately, Ben dispatches LifeStraws to the third world and disaster zones. I would not normally advocate, uh, the drinking of water from a pond, but I think today we'll give it a go. Wow. Wow. That's some nasty looking water. Why not you drink it with your straw, and I'll use the LifeStraw? All right, and then we'll wait 18 hours and see who's doing better off. So` So by putting that into there and drinking, that will take out pretty much anything that could cause me illness? Any waterborne pathogen will be filtered out. So, uh, I'll let you... Would you? Would you? ...do the honours. Would you? ...do the honours. That's very good of you. (CHUCKLES) Wow. Look at that. Far out. Ladies and gentlemen, there it is. Ladies and gentlemen, there it is. I've just purified water using my own body. And then I can just drink that... straight. And then I can just drink that... straight. There you go. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Do you want a go? You might catch something from me. That would be the disaster. That's like we're sharing a peace pipe, in a way. I wanna get one of these and put it in my, um, disaster preparation kit. Cos I can never be bothered. They always say you should have three days of water stored, and you go, 'Oh. I've got a wine cellar.' Well, I say a wine cellar. Got some wine in a box. Well, I say a wine cellar. Got some wine in a box. (GUFFAWS) And something like that, you just put it there with some dehydrated food... Bob's your uncle. Do you have that phrase here? Do you have that phrase here? No. Hm. 'Ah, yes. Global Radar ` doing its bit for intercultural understanding.' WOMAN: In its first year, the Keep Wellington Beautiful campaign has already reduced litter by 17% ` another successful Keep NZ Beautiful programme. NZ is beautiful. But if we actually want to be 100% pure, we ought to start with water like Mike and Greg from Stormwater 360, who are cleaning Auckland's urban run-off. I'm imagining that most of the people in these cars are totally unaware of where any of this water actually goes. Nobody really thinks about where the rainwater goes or what's in the rainwater. People just think it's clean water. And it picks up everything that's been on the road ` rubbish, brake linings, clutch linings, soluble heavy metals, even car tyres. I feel dirty. Even just walking here, I wanna go home and have a shower. Aren't there any quality control with storm-water-release-type things? You know, I guess you would've thought there would be a system; it wouldn't just run off and go into the sea. It was built many years ago when they built the city. They thought storm water was clean, so there was no emphasis put on managing it. In Auckland City, there's a 100,000 cesspits. And this is about a month's worth. So you wanna times this by 100,000 times 12, and that's how much you get going into the harbour each year. We've got here mainly cigarettes. That's polystyrene. That's a killer on marine life. We would be aghast if the council came around and picked up rubbish from rubbish bins, drove down to the sea and poured it in. Exactly. Yeah. It's the same thing, really, isn't it? And also trying to clean it up when you're down in the ocean is a lot more money, time and cost as well. It dissipates over a huge area, whereas here, you know, we're catching it the first place where it's going into the pits. Is it a bit like putting a Band-Aid on a massive haemorrhaging wound? The haemorrhaging wound is the fact that there is so much stuff that never breaks down. We've got to stop using the amount of plastics we do, but what do we do in the meantime before we have that cultural change? It's just gonna keep on going into the harbour. It's also education. Your cigarette butt being flicked into the pit ends up in the harbour. It's not a rubbish bin. There are also larger units to stop motorway goop from gushing into the sea. The water comes off the motorway down to here and out to the harbour. Right. That's... horrible. Right. That's... horrible. That's motorway soup. Like a slurry... of asphalt and motorway tyres and other small particulates. So all of that is being stopped by those filters from going out into the sea. What you can't see is, obviously, dissolved metals in there, so I wouldn't be drinking this. This is the storm filter. It filters fine, suspended solids, hydrocarbons and heavy metals out of the storm water. out of the storm water. Right. How does it do that? out of the storm water. Right. How does it do that? Water is sucked through this media, down the centre and out the drain at the bottom. This is a spent one. It's full of, uh, hydrocarbons and dirt and car tyres. Here's a clean cartridge. This one hasn't been put in the ground yet, and you see the filter media. The perlite in this is beautiful and clean, and one year later, it ends up like this. Let's see what it looks like when it comes out of the filters. Let's see what it looks like when it comes out of the filters. Get that out of there... That looks better. That looks better. Yeah. Much better. And there we have it ` dirty water to clean water. It is quite a` an astounding difference. Just thinking about just how much rubbish was caught in that one water pit, extrapolate that out over an entire city. That is a lot of rubbish. Amazing that you can have high-density areas such as an apartment building, where the` the numbers of cigarette butts are astronomical ` people smoking on their balconies then just throwing them out on to the street. Problem solved. It's gone away. Only it hasn't gone away. And it does astound me that we still` well, not we. I mean, not me, obviously; possibly not you. But some people still don't really think that a cigarette butt is waste, when, really, what they are is these toxic little bullets that people just discard willy-nilly into the environment. Disgusting. I feel like I'm some kind of old man. 'It's disgusting.' If I had a cane, I would wave it, at this point, and gesticulate wildly, but I'm` I can't do that within the confines of my tent. IMITATES OLD MAN: 'It's disgusting.' Next stop, The Manawatu ` home to one of NZ's most polluted rivers. But there may be a way to clean it and make useful fertiliser at the same time. Plants need phosphorus to grow, but worldwide, it's in short supply. Most of us, however, dispose of some daily, which is why I'm at a sewage oxidation plant to meet Massey University scientists Andy and Nicola. We're flushing a whole lot of this valuable resource down the toilet, literally... and figuratively. What's going on out there right now? What's going on out there right now? What's happening is we get a whole lot of algae growing. These ponds are good at removing most things, but one of the challenges is phosphorus. Like your garden needs nutrients, these algae need nutrients too. And they take up quite a bit, but they don't quite get it all. And so what we have here is we have to douse chemicals in to try and get rid of it, but what we'd like to do is get rid of those chemicals. We want these algae to do their job better. And so you're essentially looking for a very hungry form of algae that will eat all the phosphorus. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So simple. It's gotta be simple, eh. We've concentrated ourselves into communities; we've concentrated our animals; we've concentrated industries, and so you end up with a concentrated form of pollution. So all we're doing here is we're taking the same bacteria` algae that you find in nature and just concentrating it up. Nature, eh? Nature, eh? Yeah. Shall we get out of the nature? Cos this is all a bit too much nature for me. (CHUCKLES) Thankfully Massey University has a warm lab handy. Is it possible to harvest those algae and remove the phosphorus, or do you leave it in the algae and spread it on the pasture? Yeah, you probably leave it in the algae. It would be much easier to, um, spread that, and you also get a bit of organic matter and things in there as well. There'd also be a whole lot of nitrogen and other trace elements in there too. Be quite a well-balanced fertiliser. There's always biotech applications downstream, but today it's just how can we clean up the waterways? And this is a very promising technique for that. Sometimes I think that a lot of us just assume that if there is a problem with, for example, a river, that there is someone whose job it is to make sure that problem doesn't exist, when it's becoming increasingly sort of obvious that often, there isn't. As a complex society, we're never all going to agree upon the standard that a river should be at and the action that should be taken. At the very least, there should be a base from which we can all come together and go, 'Yeah, no, we don't think that's appropriate.' I love science. It's heartening to see just how much research is being done into cleaning up waterways. But can you just imagine how much other research could be done if we didn't have to do that because we weren't putting anything into the waterways to begin with? Food for thought. Wash it down with a nice, cool glass of crystal-clear drinking water. Adam's ale, my grandfather used to call it. Here's to you, Grandad. And you, Adam, with your excellent, crystal-clean ale. JANGLY GUITAR MUSIC Captions by Glenna Casalme. Edited by June Yeow. www.tvnz.co.nz/access-services Tune in next week for more water cooler facts on local food. I'm off to Peru, which is actually the home of the Maori potato and kumara, and I found out how honey smugglers are targeting our golden goodness. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air.