Celebrating World Water Day 2013

Published March 22, 2013 14:58 by Brian Luenow, Founder/President at HydrateLife

In honor of World Water Day on March 22 I wanted to give you a brief history on World Water Day. Before I do that let's look at some facts about water and the worldwide water (and sanitation) crisis:

If you look at all the water in the worldyou'd find that:
- 97.5% of it is saltwater and therefore cannot be used for drinking water (it could be desalinated, but this is costly and takes a lot of energy, plus you need to find something to do with all the brine, a byproduct of the process).
- The remaining 2.5% is fresh water, however, 70% of that is frozen in ice caps, and almost 30% is locked deep underground.
- This means less than 1% of the world's fresh water is easily accessible to humans via lakes, shallow aquifers, rivers, streams and the like.
3.4 million peopledie every year from water and sanitation related diseases, which is like the entire population of Los Angeles dying. 99% of these deaths are in developing nations.

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2 Replies

Hey Paula,I may have been a ...

Hey Paula, I may have been a little over critical in the article. Yes, I totally think that World Water Day is a great thing and can bring awareness to people that dont work with water-related issues. It also is an excuse for people that are aware of the issues to educate others about it. I had a couple of teachers tell me that they took the day to teach their kids about water-related issues which is great! Other's told me about rallies they attended, talks they listened to, etc. The point I was trying to get across was that with this being such a HUGE issue we should be hearing more about it besides 1 day out of the year. It's a problem of priority in this society. People would rather turn on the news and hear about Kim Kardasians latest goings-on then about and important issue like this crisis...which is sad.

Published March 26, 2013 03:41 by Brian Luenow, Founder/President at HydrateLife

That's really interesting, ...

That's really interesting, thanks. In your blog post you question the need for World Water day -- after all, the issues around water are so important they should be a priority every day. Do you think that the gimmick of World Water Day can nonetheless have some positive effects for raising awareness among those who don't work on water-related problems every day?

Published March 26, 2013 03:05 by 000 000