Hartbeespoort community leads the way this Global Action Day

Henning and Thea Holm of Omnibus Engineering have taken up the challenge of 350.0rg’s Global Work Party and will be simultaneously helping underprivileged schools in their area and launching the biggest Global Action Day campaign in South Africa - to get homes and businesses to start harvesting rainwater.

In the effort to combat climate change, there are few projects that join the whole world together, but 350.org are making great strides in unifying campaigners across the globe with Global Action Day. Taking place on the 10th of October this year (10/10/10), this is a plan to tackle climate change at a local level, and send world leaders the message that if we can get to work, they can get to work too.

Thea Holm says that “because South Africa will be facing water supply shortages as soon as 2013 in Gauteng and in our local Hartbeespoort area, the quality of water distributed to our people is disastrous, we decided to choose WATER as our topic for taking action in our community.”

On Sunday, the 10th of October, Omnibus Engineering, in conjunction with JoJo Tanks and DOH Hardware Brits, will begin installing ten 5 000 litre water tanks in schools throughout Hartbeespoort. The first tank will be installed at Meerhof School this noteworthy day, and the other nine schools will receive their water tank vouchers for the upcoming installations here.

“We will be putting up a rain water tank at the school, but more importantly, we are starting a campaign to encourage people in our local community to put rain water tanks up in their own households,” says Thea. By buying a JoJo Tank through DOH Hardware Brits, a percentage of the sale will go towards a School Tank Fund that will supply more tanks for the ten schools. DOH Brits also agreed to see to it that households get the best prices for tanks, gutters and down pipes.

By harvesting rainwater, we can begin to eliminate the need for pumped water and thereby conserve energy. Once purified, the rainwater can even be used for domestic purposes - the average household in South Africa uses 170 litres of water per person, per day.

Thea sums up the initiative by saying, “the success of these community projects will send out a very strong statement to governments all over the world that the people of the world are ready to take action. We want governments to start taking action by putting laws and practices into place for greener technology solutions to ensure a future for upcoming generations.”

Remember: Global Action Day is just that - global. There are thousands of action groups in over 150 countries and those who are not in the Hartbeespoort area on 10/10/10, can search for another event to join at: www.350.org/map.

For additional information, contact Thea Holm, phone: 082 824 8340, e-mail: tholm@omnibussolar.com, web: www.omnibussolar.com or www.350.org.

Contact Information

Thea Holm

Campaign Organiser

Omnibus Solar

Contact via E-mail