This newsletter comes out every other Thursday and hopefully provides you with thought-provoking content about the mundane, wacky, and weird. I will be writing until the 75th edition. If you know someone who may enjoy the newsletter, share it with them here.
Jenny and I capped off our honeymoon with a few days in Tel Aviv. Walking around the city everything seems lush. Flowers hang off balconies and filtered light peeks through the street trees. How is everything so green? Isn’t Israel a desert?
Israeli's ingenuity has led them to become the world leader in water innovation. Below is a pedestrian and bike pathway near our Airbnb in Tel Aviv.
When it comes to water Israel should be up a (dry) creek without a paddle. “60% of the land is desert and the rest is arid. Due to climate change, rainfall has dropped to half its 1948 average. On top of that, the population has 10x since Israel’s inception in 1948.
How has Israel become such a powerhouse in water and what can we learn from how they maximize their use of water?
Drip irrigation
The modern form of drip irrigation was founded by Israeli Simcha Blass. Drip irrigation is the most efficient way of watering your crops. With flood irrigation, you lose about 60% of the water to evaporation and with sprinklers you lose about 30 to 40%.
In the 1930s Blass noticed a tree on his farm was growing more than the others and discovered it came from a leaked pipe right by the root of the tree. After many years of tinkering, he found a way to lay pipes with emitters that slowly released water. From 1948 to 1956, Blass was the founder and director of the governmental water institutions of the newly established State of Israel. From there he created a company called Netafim, which is still one of the world leaders in drip irrigation. For instance, in 2016, Netafim secured a $200 million deal to install drip irrigation in Ethiopia.
Many places like California don’t install drip irrigation in part because the upfront cost of laying the piping is too expensive to do on existing farms. Additionally, despite extreme droughts, the price of water remains underpriced. As a result, massive farms opt for a long sprinkler system they move along the field.
Desalination
Israel is also the world leader in desalination which takes water from the Mediterranean sea and removes the salt from the seawater. An astounding 50% of the water consumed in Israel is from desalinated water. To put that in perspective, less than 1% of America’s water comes from desalinated water. It takes a lot of skilled labor, upfront costs, and distribution to make desalination feasible. Despite the challenges, global desalination is expected to double in the next 10 years. Here is an Israeli desalination plant on the Mediterranean sea.
Through its innovations in desalination, Israel has made ties with nearby countries like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.
Holistic planning
Part of Israel’s success comes from effective central planning. One of their weaknesses, tricky relations with their neighbors, has become a strength. They felt an intense pressure to become water independent. In 1952, merely four years after Israel was founded as a nation-state, they established a national water supply system and network of pipes and reservoirs to funnel water to cities. For example, here is a map showing how the more lush parts of the north pipe water down to the more populous south.
They have invested $750 million in the last 10 years into centralizing water treatment, to improve closing the loop on recycling water. Israel is a world leader in recycling water. For example, in the United States, we recycle 10% of our water but in Israel, they recycle 90+% of their water.
Water conservation is embedded in the culture. In Israeli education system, schoolchildren are socialized and taught to embrace water conservation. It can range from teachers instructing how to save water while brushing teeth to a popular kindergarten song with lyrics like “don’t waste a drop”.
As a Californian, I’m hoping that we can take a drop out of Israel’s water bucket by doubling down on water research and development, embracing drip irrigation, and planning more holistically.
P.S. If all that water talks wets your whistle, I recommend my friend and fellow Beach Bi-Weekly’s subscriber Adam Tank’s blog “At Water’s Edge”. Adam is one of the leaders in the water world and is consistently producing interesting and thought-provoking content.
Album I’m enjoyIng
I’ve been bobbing along to Jack Johnson’s new album “Meet the Moonlight” all week. I particularly like the song “One Step Ahead”. His music brings me a sense of creativity, connection with nature, and a calm energy.
Quote I’m pondering
“Where attention goes, energy flows”.
-Tony Robbins
Travel preparation
These are the tactical things I do before visiting a city or new country.
Download google maps for offline access. This allows you to look up places and get driving directions.
Look up the e-scooters or bike share and download the apps. I stick them all in a travel folder so they don’t take up screen space and I can simply search for them.
Is Uber available in that country?
Exchange rate. You will never get a 1:1 exchange rate, but knowing the rate gives you something to compare to when the agent gives you their rate.
Save your hotel/airbnb in Google Maps
Figure out where you will eat breakfast.
For me, that is coffee shops, others might be the hotel or skipping breakfast. Figuring out where you will eat breakfast adds a little needed structure and then you can figure out the day from there. Unlike dinner, I don’t find it tiring to have breakfast in the same location multiple days in a row.
Pic of the Week
Well, getting married was incredible. I received some marriage advice from family friend, Dave Erb, “if you play your cards right, your wedding day shouldn’t be the best day of your life, it shouldn’t even crack the top 10 or 100”. I like that perspective, as we age and grow together we get better at learning what lights us up. While youth has its advantages, experience fosters wisdom.
I appreciate your modesty in not mentioning it, but I also told you that you and Jenny are the first couple I've ever thought didn't need that advice. Beth and I want you to know what a joy and privilege it was to be with you in Tulsa. Happy travels!