Today is World Water Day. It’s a day to raise awareness about the importance of clean drinking water, especially for women and children worldwide. Here are some surprising and unfortunate facts from Water.org:
Surveys from 45 developing countries show that women and children bear the primary responsibility for water collection in the majority of households. This is time not spent working at an income-generating job, caring for family members, or attending school.
Diarrhea is the 4th leading cause of child death, a majority of which are water-related.
Diarrhea kills children at a rate equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every ten hours.
An estimated 622,000 children under the age of five die each year from diarrheal diseases globally.
Reductions in time to collect water has been found to increase school attendance. A study in Ghana found that a 15 minute reduction in water collection time increases the proportion of girls attending school by 8% to 12%. Another study found a one hour reduction in water collection time increases school attendance by approximately 8% in Yemen, 18% in Pakistan, and 11% in Morocco.
Here are 20 more facts to consider from Able Skills.
View Interactive Version (via Able Skills ).
Planet Box offers a solution for what you can do to avoid wasting precious water that is so needed in developing nations worldwide: invest in a reusable water bottle.
- Save Money & Water: Americans buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week. It offers you to get rid of half full plastic bottles filling up in your house and fill PlanetBox’s BottleRocket with tap water that flows virtually free.
- Garbage Be Gone: While single-use plastic bottles might be convenient, they add up to a lot of garbage, which end up in our oceans and landfills and contribute to more global warming. Packing a waste free BottleRocket lightens your carbon footprint on the planet.
- Stray away from dangerous BPAs:The BPA compound found in plastic water bottles is so harmful, several states are banning it. PlanetBox is made of food-grade stainless steal, making it BPA (and other harmful chemicals found in plastic) free!
Good idea and great concept!