Water

A few days ago I said I need to think more about additional things I can do to make our family greener. I thought of something the other day in the shower (where all good ideas occur!). I waste a LOT of water! My dad always said my step-mom ran water when she was unsettled, doing dishes, loads of laundry, things like that. I think I do the same, except I feel like I'm accomplishing something when water's running. I think I'm ok on the laundry thing. I really only do full loads of laundry and now with my HE washer I'm in pretty good shape. But I waste a lot of water in the kitchen. I need to turn off the tap when I'm not washing dishes. I let the water run WAY too much. I also need to turn off the water when I'm washing my hands and brushing my teeth. I think the way I REALLY waste the most water though, is using it as a babysitter. I know this sounds odd, but during bathtime (which in our house is really shower time) I let the kids stay in the shower way after they're clean and rinsed. I let the tub run when I should just turn it off. I'm sacrificing a natural resource so I can put on my make-up or blowdry my hair in peace (well, relatively). That's awful! It's another way I'm taking what I have for granted and wasting something that's so precious to millions around the world. While I let my kids stare off into space while clean, potable water runs down the drain "every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.". I went to water.org to look for some stats to use here about water conservation, but I found a ton of startling facts about water around the globe.

Children

• 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. (13)
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease. (2)
• 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. (13)



• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time. (8)
• In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water. (13)
• 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year. (11)

Women

• 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.



• Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources. (1)
• A study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that women’s participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness. (7)

I'm so glad I happened across this! These are facts that you hear every so often, but forget, because they don't affect people around you. It almost makes me embarrassed to be an American, much in the same way I'm ashamed to watch Top Chef and listen to them criticize a dish because it the flavor palette doesn't work well together, when people are literally starving to death around the world. It's just so callus.

There Rob...today's post really is a "why I'm better than you"! And it all started out to be about how I need to make my kids take shorter showers!