Thanks to blog action day we are going to take you away from our regularly scheduled programming and discuss an important issue today: Water.
One of the things that we are blessed with in Western North Carolina is water. In fact, my particular county hosts the head waters for every stream and river that flows out of Haywood County. For this reason it’s just not an environmental issue I have ever paid much attention to. I know water conservation is important, but it is hard to live it when you’re more worried fighting mold and mildew from the damp. Even growing up with a well, we never worried about water. We had a spring that went right through the property.
The rest of the world doesn’t have this luxury. In fact, almost 1 billion people don’t have access to good, clean water. Yet, American’s drink, on average, almost 200 bottles of water a year (50% of which comes from a tap). Yeah, we’re greedy and apparently stupid since we pay for water that we have already paid taxes on… That thought makes me want to smack my forehead. Let me lay it out for you:
- You pay taxes/water bills to clean your tap water
- Companies like Pepsico then take the tap water and put it in bottles
- You now buy the bottle of water at 100 times the cost of the tap water THAT you’ve already paid for
- Hopefully, you feel stupid
- Oh right, and you polluted the environment with your plastic bottle
Please, explain this to the rest of the world for me. Because I sure can’t. While, I was finding out all kinds of neat facts about why the rest of the world thinks we are idiots, I also came across why it just isn’t morally right. 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe water related illnesses EACH WEEK.
I don’t think anyone can stand around and say it’s morally okay to let somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.9 million children die from lack of water each year while we sip tap water from a bottle.
Learn what you can do to conserve America’s Water: US EPA
Learn how the rest of the world could use your help: Water Charity
Learn about at least one way to fix the problem: Lifestraw
Read more about this issue from the thousands of other bloggers talking about this event at Blog Action Day 2010.
