The People of the Great State of Annoyance Drink Nothing but Bottled Water

FLOW (For Love of Water) is a really informative documentary about the world water crisis. I just watched it last night and here are some facts that currently have me annoyed:

• Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
• Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault.
• Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.
• Of the 6 billion people on earth, 1.1 billion do not have access to safe, clean drinking water.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently does not regulate 51 known water contaminants. (www.foodandwaterwatch.org)
• While the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, those in developing countries cannot find five.(www.charitywater.org)
• According to the National Resources Defense Council, in a scientific study in which more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water were tested, about one-third of the bottles contained synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic. (www.nrdc.org)
• Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil.
• California's water supply is running out – it has about 20 years of water left in the state.
• There are over 116,000 human-made chemicals that are finding their way into public water supply systems.
• The cost per person per year for having 10 liters of safe drinking water every day is just $2 USD.

And finally, the one that really gets me going:

• The cost to provide clean drinking water to the 1.1 billion who need it is between $10 and $30 billion a year. Global sales of bottled water reached $100 billion in 2005.

I really believe this is going to be the major "what the hell were we thinking" issue of our generation. We're letting major corporations move into our communities and deplete our supply of drinking water, and then we're buying it back from them in non-renewable containers. And we're paying them 3000 times what it would cost to get it out of our faucets.

Check out FLOW when you get a chance. To read more about it go to www.flowthefilm.com. It will be available on DVD December 9th. Buy it, watch it, pass it on.