Drea Knufken
Image: Flagstaffotos.com.au/Wikimedia
Today is Blog Action Day 2010. The theme is water, that innocuous liquid that also happens to be an absolute requirement for any human civilization to survive. It’s a very relevant theme, and one that is sadly underreported in the media.
To commemorate water for Blog Action Day, we’ve listed 10 things you need to know about water (this list also appeared for spring’s World Water Day):
1. 1% of the world’s fresh water is currently accessible to humans.
2. 346,000 million: Number of gallons of fresh water the US consumes per day.
3. 80% of that water is used for irrigation and thermoelectric generation.
4. 80-100 gallons: Amount of water the average person in the US uses per day.
5. 13.2 gallons: Estimated amount of water required for any single person for cooking, sanitation, bathing, and survival needs.
6. 3.575 million: Number of people who die every year from water-related disease.
7. 84% of them are children.
8. 50% of global hospital beds are occupied by someone with a waterborne illness.
9. 25% of bottled water is basically tap water in a bottle–treated or untreated.
10. 1.5 million tons of plastic are used to bottle 89 billion liters of water every year.
Help sustain your own local water supply by installing water-saving devices into your home and using filtered rather than bottled water.
Sources: All About Water, Water.org
