Goods associated with water

Objects are the result of our inventiveness and show a wide knowledge of the environment. They make everyday life easier and clearly express how we build our bio-cultural diversity.

Men and women have shared in the crafting of those objects, from the techniques needed to adapt dried fruits like pumpkins (used in places as far apart as Mexico and Afghanistan), to those needed to make earthenware pots, whose manufacture, depending on the population, was a woman’s speciality, a man’s, or both, and more frequently whole family groups’. Containers for transport, bowls and other containers, and objects for domestic and personal hygiene (from chamber pots to bathtubs) were part of the craftworks associated with water and now replaced by industrial products in most populations.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the incorporation of plastic into these goods was very fast due to its low cost, lower weight and greater resistance to wear and tear. Its spread has two negative consequences: the rapid loss of knowledge linked to craftsmanship and so of cultural heritage, and the exponential increase in plastic waste and its very long degradation period which is having terrible environmental consequences.

The special relation between women and water supplying means that any material change associated with transporting it directly affects their lives.