Pop-up park promotes water conservation

LAST night saw the launch of a pop-up urban park, serving as a creative space and aimed at raising awareness of the drought among Cape Town residents and visitors.

Speaking at the Think Water event last night, Mayor Patricia de Lille said: “To think one year ago during January 2016 as a collective we were consuming 1.1 billion litres of water per day. Today we are using 600 million litres of water per day.”

De Lille said after receiving “just a little bit of rain last week”, consumption increased.

“Due to this increased consumption, we pushed back our predicted Day Zero from January 16 to May 3,” she said.

Urban Lime, the organisation behind the campaign, said the concept was put together over the past three weeks.

“Urban Lime have underwritten the Urban park project for the Church Square and are providing a platform for the open call to citizens to participate in the project as we feel very passionate about the crisis that is affecting us all,” marketing director Katie Friedman said.

The company said it intends having the pop-up park around until Day Zero is reached.

“Which we hope never happens because we would love to have this space around here for a very long time,” Friedman said.

The park is filled with various art installations including a 500m2 artificial grass rug.

Rashiq Fataar from Future Cape Town said: “We are deeply passionate about our public spaces and their role in bringing people together. This park marks an exciting step forward for the space and the future of our city.”

We pushed back our predicted Day Zero from January 16 to May 3