Friday, October 15, 2010

Blog Action Day - Water!

Blog Action Day is an annual event, held every October 15, that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year's topic is water.

We in Minnesota and the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest region are among the earth's fortunate when it comes to water -- in most cases we have abundant sources of fresh water and reliable water treatment and distribution services. That's not the case everywhere, as I'm sure you know.

According to Water.org:
  • Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease.
  • 890 million people lack access to safe water.
  • 2.5 billion people don’t have a toilet.
  • The majority of the world’s illness is caused by fecal matter.
  • More people on earth have cell phones than toilets
And think about this:
  • In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed for the most basic of human needs — collecting water for domestic use.
  • This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, IBM, Target, and Kroger, according to Gary White, co-founder of Water.org.

Water.org envisions the day when everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water. It is easy to take for granted ready access to a safe supply of drinking water. Yet nearly one billion people lack this most basic commodity. Creating accessible, safe water supplies in developing countries liberates people to live healthier, fuller, more productive lives.




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1 comment:

Dave Lucas said...

I'm a tomato gardener myself! Thanks for blogging about water, our dearest resource! People need to come together on this important issue! Here's a link to my article about water.