How does your garden grow? In Israel, not so well

March 12, 2009 - 9:13 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, Israeliness, Life 

The entrance to Ma'aleh Adumim (Photo: Jacob Richman)

The entrance to Ma'aleh Adumim (Photo: Jacob Richman)

One thing we pride ourselves on in Israel is our public gardens and our private back yards. My own town has beatifully landscaped public spaces filled with seasonal flowers. But that could all end.

If you’ve got a back yard or a garden, plan on decorating it brown this spring. Due to the drought-like winter and the Kinneret being a zillion centimeters below its red line, some drastic measures are likely to be put into effect to save water this year, including a ban on watering both public and private gardens.

And one sad byproduct of that is the likelihood that up to 30,000 Israelis who work in the gardening profession will either lose their livelihoods or have their income drastically cut back.

According to Green Gardens magazine (Ganim Yerukim), in addition to gardeners losing their jobs, there’s likely to be a domino effect on many businesses serving the gardening sector, such as gardening contractors, designers and manufacturers who are left without work.

The Mashov Group which publishes the magazine compiled data that showed that 2,000 workers in the gardening industry have already lost their jobs in recent months. That’s because there’s already been a ban issued by the Water Authority on watering public and private parks, gardens and lawns, effective until the end of April. However, since the winter’s been so dry, it’s likely the ban will continue into the summer.

And even without the water shortage, the Israeli Landscape and Gardening Association reports that the decline in new construction projects due to the the global economic crisis has led to a 60 percent drop in orders for new plantings of lawns and gardens in the private and public sector in the first half of 2009.

The good news, though, is that the Water Authority has hired supermodel Bar Refaeli to star in a campaign to urge Israelis to save water. Unfortunately, after watching the racy ads she’s done for Mei Eden spring water, the male viewers may be in need of cold showers.

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Drinking water

March 4, 2009 - 7:02 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, Israeliness 

camelbakContamination scares don’t seem to terrify Israelis, even when it could be affecting their favorite bottled water brands. According to a survey last week for business newspaper The Marker, 62% of the respondents who buy Mei Eden and Neviot mineral water said they’re still buying their brands, even though both companies suspended production last month following contamination worries, due to the drought affecting the Kinneret.

Mei Eden and Neviot are by far the most popular bottled water brands in Israel, but bottled water as a whole is a pretty much a given in these parts, as consumers are seemingly averse to drinking tap water. “Industry observers say that less than one-third of Israelis drink straight tap water and less than one-third filter their tap water using one of the devices on the market. That leaves more than one-third of the population that regularly consumes bottled water.” That’s from a recent Ha’aretz article.

Why? 41% of the poll respondents said their main reason for drinking bottled water is they think it’s healthier. A smaller number, about 27%, say it’s all about taste, and 11% cite it as a habit. A Jerusalem Post story said this on the subject: “The experts’ contention that desalinated tap water is clean and healthy is countered by an opposite perception held by large segments of the population. While there are no hard figures showing how many people don’t drink any tap water – desalinated or not – preferring instead the bottled option, the phenomenon is prevalent, especially in the greater Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas.”

According to Professor Avner Adin, a member of the Faculty of Agriculture of Hebrew University and a former head of the government Drinking Water Standards Revision Committee, the quality of tap water in Israel is among the best in the world. He has said that he and his family drank it “without giving it a second thought.”

So do we. And ever since my husband picked up some Camelbak water bottles this summer — which can be taken apart and washed in the dishwasher — I’ve become a water-from-the-sink (albeit, filtered water) addict. And they’re BPA-free. So drink up, and save money.

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