On our planet, over 1 billion people drink unsafe water – bacteria, pesticides, oil, chemicals, poison and sewage are all mixed in with this pristine, life giving liquid. Waterborne disease kills more children under 5 than anything else – more than war, more than starvation, more than land mines. More than tsunamis and earthquakes, more than genocide, more than dictators, more than slavery, more than child soldiering. It is the number one killer, but the poverty and misery and sickness it causes, even before all this death, is even greater. There is nothing quite like it.
The WonWater Project is focused on changing this. It is aimed at getting simple, effective water filters to families in need for about one dollar per month.
So what has this got to do with unbottled.org and the use of plastic bottles? Well, for the cost of a 600ml bottle of water each day for 5 days, a family of four could get clean water for a year. Nowhere is the disparity, the idiocy, of the wealth divide so apparent and so unnoticed. Four litres of bottled water from a convenience store, or four people’s water for a year. Same cost, very different value.
We are not asking you to donate that money. WonWater is not a charity. We want clean water to be affordable to everyone on this planet. But isn’t it just a bottle of water? Yes, but it is also a symbol of how the rich world misuses the energy, the creativity, and the resources of this planet. A planet that is actually running out of resources. A planet that is finite, and that we are not sharing.
Those children are dying because we are not sharing it Because we are disposing of it – we are throwing it away.
In a country with great tap water, getting rid of bottled water is the easiest way to begin changing that.
