WATER - LOST IN TRANSLATION                            

For those of us who call this big dry drought-prone island our home, water is a precious resource, and the distinct lack of it at the moment calls for a communal effort to preserve what little we have. In the case of Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse population, communication is the key to breaking down the barriers to cooperation on ecological issues. The environmental message needs to be equally accessible to all Australians for it to make a difference. Australian’s all live very differently and this needs to be taken into account when approaching methods of water saving, which should be specific to the community and translated for maximum effect.

The Ethnic Communities Council of NSW’s (ECC) Asian Restaurant Water Saving Project has done just that. Having received funding from the Department of Energy, Utilities Sustainability (DEUS) Water Saving Fund, the project spearheaded by Helen Scott of the ECC, is currently changing the way Chinese chefs, from Sydney and the Illawarra, run their kitchens. The education based program has not only encouraged general water-wise practice, but has introduced a new technology to an ancient traditional method of cooking, the waterless wok.

In 2005, Sydney Water developed the wondrous waterless wok. Research has shown that Chinese restaurants using a traditional wok stove use up to 8000 litres a day. The waterless wok is a simplistic piece of engineering, but has the potential to save each restaurant thousands of dollars a year, as well as improve the sustainability of the industry as a whole. Sydney Water worked out that if all of Sydney’s estimated 2000 traditional wok stoves went waterless it could save Sydney 3,600, 000, 000 litres of precious H2O per year. This is the equivalent of almost 30 thousand people just stopping using water all together.

There was however one problem with this seemingly ingenuous plan. If you have never heard of this product you would be in the same position as many Chinese restaurant owners. They were unaware that they could save money and increase their business’ sustainability in one fail swoop. It became apparent that the waterless wok was not being picked up by those who needed it. The very people the waterless wok was designed for were unaware of the full extent of its benefits or the ease with which it could become part of their kitchen. The waterless wok needed to be presented directly to the Chinese community if it was to become a reality rather than remaining just a really good idea.

During this time the ECC’s Bilingual Environmental Educators had been working with many linguistically diverse communities as part of the Metropolitan Water for Life Plan to encourage water wise behaviour in the home. It was the bilingual educators engaging with the Chinese community who thought that the plan should be extended to the work place. Helen Scott saw this as an opportunity to take the available technology, the waterless wok directly to the community and create a project where education would lead to direct results. This was the starting point for the ECC’s Asian Restaurants Water Saving Project and the waterless wok was the star of the show.

The ECC’s Bilingual Educators were the missing link between the waterless wok and its potential buyers. Once business owners were aware of the benefits of the waterless wok and the relatively minimal installation costs when compared to the long-term savings, they were often happy to give up their traditional water guzzling wok stoves. The Program has proved as successful as the cuisine that inspired it, and this was recently recognised with further funding.

The Project has visited 97 restaurants and has so far replaced 58 stoves, which means an annual water saving of 69 Mega litres. The extra funding will allow them to extend this to the Central coast and all Asian restaurants, as opposed to just Chinese.

“I am delighted, I feel really good about this project, I have worked as an environmental educator before now and it is great to see an educational and environmental result” said Project Manager, Helen Scott from the ECC NSW.

“I have also got something out of it personally. Being of an Anglo background I have really learnt about the Chinese culture. I learnt that there is a hierarchy in the kitchen for the chefs. Where a chef stands can show his place in the hierarchy, so we had to take this into account when replacing the stoves”

For Eric Wong, of The Golden Century Seafood Restaurant, where the project was launched, the wok itself has even taken an important symbolic place in the Kitchen. Eric felt that the installment of waterless woks not only saved huge amounts of water each day, but that having the wok in the kitchen was a reminder to the kitchen staff of the valuable nature of water.

“They look at the new wok stove, and they remember to turn the taps off as soon as possible” he said.