Geoff Girardin

Let’s start this off with some facts.

• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.
• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
• Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
• Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.
• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.

The above list is taken from a handful of facts listed on water.org

This is heartbreaking. But my research didn’t end at just glancing at provided material given to me from blogactionday.org. Did you know that 17 million barrels of oil are used to make all of the water bottles consumed in the US each year, and of those bottles made, only 16% will be recycled.

Let’s get this straight.

Right now, in the world, an obscene amount of people are dying due to a lack of water. The average American consumes 200 bottles of water a year. And to make all those bottles, we are wasting 14,620,000 barrels of oil every year.

This isn’t an attack on the water bottle community. I love water bottles. They are the perfect proportions and weight to throw around. Seriously. Also the water tastes delicious. And most companies now donate some portion of their water to cancer research or something.

But what we do with the bottles after consumption of the product inside is the key point in the entire process. If we throw it in the trash, we contribute to the problem. Buying that water bottle so it can potentially save a live is fine, but throwing it out and allowing that container to go to waste leaves you back at zero. It cancels out your good deed for the day.

charity:water is doing something right. Their goal is to provide clean water to every single one of the 16,000 Bayaka people. The Bayaka were the last hunter-gatherer society in the world, until loggers forced them out of the forest, and condemned them to living in the outskirts of villages, facing scorn every day from people who viewed them as savage animals who belonged in the jungle. The jungle that was taken from them. Because of this, they cannot have access to clean water. The $1.7 million that charity:water is raising right now will not only provide every single one of these people with clean water, but it will provide an additional 90,000 people from Central Africa with clean water.

Please take a moment to watch this video about the campaign.

If you’ll notice, at the end of that video, the children seem excited and pleased to have clean water. That’s natural. But look closely. I feel as though in some of their eyes, there is wonder. Because honestly? That was probably the first time those kids had seen clean water, water like what we see every day in our evian bottles.

What can we do? The natural response is to throw money at the problem. Well, that is perfect. Donate. Donate to one of the multitude of amazing organizations dedicated to giving the entire world clean water.

• charity:water
• water.org
• unicef
• Greenpeace
• Green For All
• NRDC
• Oceana
• National Wildlife Federation Action Fund
• water advocates
• The Water Project
• circle of blue
• American Rivers
• blood:water mission
• Generosity Water

If you cannot donate, just recycle those water bottles. It’s not that hard, I mean, most American cities now require that you recycle, and some are even starting to fine you if you don’t. And I think that is awesome. And you would be ensuring that the incredible amount of oil used to make those bottles does not go to waste.

That’s rad, isn’t it?

Are you participating in Blog Action Day this year? If so, leave a link in the comments! I’d love to read what you have to say.