Water: World Water Day

What does World Water Day mean to me. It means a day of living without bottled water, without tap water, without showers, without indoor plumbing. Living like over 1 billion people live every day. I am blessed by the resources I have been given at my disposal. The Declaration of Independance sums up best what I believe, "all men are created equal." That quote has always stuck with me throughout my life.

This Friday isn't about the statistics. If we listened to statistics then we would believe that over 1 billion people live without access to clean water, this is misleading. The Dominican Republic is a place where 87 percent of the country has access to clean water, yet they can not drink it from their taps. They have to go and buy bottled water from a store and that is considered access. The city supply that is piped into peoples homes is only available 8 hours a day 3 days a week, if they are lucky. The city supply also is full of harmful bacteria and particles that make you second guess even washing your hands with it. There is more work to be done to improve the water in this country before it should be considered clean by human standards.

World Water Day is about remembering the history of the clean water movement and those who have given their lives to this cause. I read a story today about Perveen Rahman today and her work in the poor districts of Pakistan. She went against the flow and helped bring low cost sanitation methods to Karachi, Pakistan and in the process improved the lives of over a million people. A few hours after I first read about her I head that she was shot dead in the same community that she dedicated her life to improve. This World Water Day should be made in her honor for the work she did to improve the lives of so many. I am sure every last one of us in the water business look up to her for the work she was able to do. 

So I realize I havent said much about what World Water Day is. It's a simple idea. It is the one day a year we protest the fact that so many people have no access to clean water or have to relay on bottles of water. We protest by getting together and talking about the issues we face and how we can solve them. We also give up drinking bottles of water, some are going so far as to give up water for the entire day. Some are giving up using indoor plumbing for the day to protest unsanitary conditions a lot of the world faces. Quite a few of us are also giving up showering as a way to protest. No matter how you protest it, it's all for the same cause. Raise awareness on this Friday March 22nd and let everyone know why your protesting. Join us and help us remember Perveen Rahman. 

Water: World Water Day March 22nd

I went to the store today to buy some basic necessities. I decided to walk down the soda isle to grab something to drink. It happened to be the same isle as the one where they keep bottled water. I was shocked to see that most of the bottled water was sold out. Think about that for a minute. In a country where clean water comes out of every tap it is hard to keep bottled water on the shelf.

As a whole we are a very wasteful country. We go out of our way to create waste. We will drink bottled water instead of grabbing a cup and getting water from the tap. There are places in this world who are begging for having the same luxuries as we do. Having the ability to go to the sink and get some water is a foreign concept for most of the world.

In the Dominican Republic I could buy a Dasani bottle of water, 20oz, for 10 pesos. That works out to about 25 cents per bottle. They keep the price there low because so many people use the bottles and it keeps people like me from coming in and investing in the city water supply. In the US we pay $1.25 per bottle from a vending machine. It is mind boggling why we pay so much more in the US for the same water.

After spending a week in a country with around 8 million people, and none of them are able to drink water from a tap, it strikes me that we have the same habits as them even though we have clean water. We could easily grab a reusable bottle when on the run instead of using bottled water. At the very least we could start to recycle the bottles we use so they wont end up in a land fill. One of the biggest challenges we face in the Dominican Republic is changing the way people classify trash and recyclables. Educating people about what can be recycled and why its bad to just throw it on the side of the road is not as easy as it seems. Two people I met in Santiago are currently working on a project to help educate the people on how to classify recyclables. Time will tell how they do, however, they know how hard it is to changes peoples perspectives.

The task before us is difficult but not impossible. During my time there I noticed that taxi drivers help keep the cities moving. Why can't we use that to our advantage and have advertisements about recycling and basic sanitation in every taxi. This seems like its too easy of a solution, it is because the taxi's are all government owned. Getting them to agree to anything like that means they have to see a benefit to them. In a country with little regulation that all goes unenforced getting them to see how it can benefit them personally is a tall order. This idea to give the island clean water to every house is not just about that. It is about improving and changing the education of an entire culture.

For World Water Day this Friday I am asking that no one uses bottled water for a day, and recycle every bottle you see. If we could do that for one day it would make a huge difference. Simple changes can add up over time.