Blog Action Day 2010: Water

We registered our blog to the Blog Action Day 2010 as you can see. Normally it was better to write about one issue/topic on water (usage, unsafe or unhygienic cause illnesses etc.) but actually, not only I wanted to rise the awareness of this activity, the day and the importance of topics, but also I tried to give some information about the foundation to support them.

More than 1600 bloggers from 116 countries have registered to participate in Blog Action Day 2010, focused on the issue of water. Unfortunately this number is less then last year. On 2009, it was more than 13,000 bloggers participated from 152 countries.

We also want to inform that you can help them by fundraising for clean water and spreading the word about Blog Action Day 2010 across the web. For raising funds for water, you can directly donate through Water.org, an organization co-founded by Matt Damon. Just $25 provides clean water for a lifetime for one person.

As I told before, this year the issue is about water. They explained in the following way why this subject was chosen.

?Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don?t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That?s one in eight of us.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses. 90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old.?

Nearly 1 billion people lack access to clean water, which causes a litany of struggles, diseases and even death.

The aim is overcoming hunger, disaese and poverty with water. All foundations focused on finding safe water supplies, hygiene-related solutions. This posts will be a little help to them. But total posts will be a great step when we think that the blogs and the bloggers are getting more important than other websites which posts regularly or not.

Today will be a truly inspiring day of action, as bloggers from around the world will join the global conversation about an issue that rarely gets the attention it deserves.

So.. Would you want to be one of us or one of them?

From the Action Day site:

• Water as a Human Right: In July, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over objection from the United States. Today, nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water. More Info »
• Women: In Africa, women are predominantly responsible for collecting water. They walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 40 pounds to gather water for their community, which is usually still not safe to drink. More Info »
• Children: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. More Info »
• Polluted Oceans: Not only is pollution bad for the environment, it?s also expensive! Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year. More Info »
• Uninhabitable Rivers: Today, 40% of America?s rivers and 46% of America?s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. That?s not surprising considering the fact that 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually. More Info »
• Food Footprint: Do you know the water footprint of your food? For example, 75 liters of water are required to make a glass of beer and 15,500 liters to make a kilogram of beef. More Info »
• Water Wars: Many scholar, researchers and political analysts attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. In fact, a report commissioned by the UN Development Program found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa. More Info »
• Water & Poverty: A lack of water contributes to poverty, with parents and children too ill or too busy collecting water to go to school and work. Water poverty also undermines progress poor countries are making on health – with half of hospital beds taken by people suffering with diarrhoea and dysentery. More Info »
• Technology Footprint: On an average day, 500 billion liters of water travel through US power plants to power all the technology that we use every day. For example, that shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that?s 3.2 million liters to charge those alone. More Info »
• Bottled Water: Even though people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled. More Info »
• Farmers vs. Animals: As water becomes scarcer in Africa, farmers not only compete with each other but also with other animals, including elephants. Forced into close contact with farmers, elephants destroy crops and wreak havoc on agriculture, causing farmers in turn to resort to violence in order to protect their crops and water sources. More Info »
• Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you?re wearing right now took 400 gallons of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 1800 gallons. Not wearing cotton? The dyes and synthetic fibers used to make your clothes create waste that?s among the many contributors to water pollution. More Info »
• Water Celebrities: A number of celebrities have taken up the cause of water and water rights, including Matt Damon , Adrian Grenier , Leonardo DiCaprio , and Will & Jada Smith .