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At World-Changing Kids, one of our founding philosophies is to present children with the facts about real life situations at a level that they can understand and then give them some actions that they can take to make the situation better. By teaching our children that there are actions they can take now, and that they have the power to be the change they want to see in the world, we will help our children become engaged, empowered and passionate, rather than anxious and apathetic.

Today is World Water Day. There is a lot of bad news out there about the current status of our water all over the world. Large numbers of people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water. After three years of drought conditions, Cape Town, South Africa is facing the scary possibility of reaching “Day Zero” in July of this year – when millions of homes will no longer have running water. And, we are killing our oceans, lakes and rivers – what water we do still have available to us – with plastic garbage.   If you read this and you feel that it is all too overwhelming and you don’t even know where to start to help fix it, imagine how our kids feel!

So, let’s start with two small actions we can take to help make things better.

1. Commit To Refusing Single Use Plastic Water Bottles

For North American companies, it takes 1.39 liters to make one liter of water. It is important to note that this is lower than the amount of water it takes to make other beverages – like soda, beer and wine – but we are getting no added value for that .39 liters of additional water.   In fact, we are getting a whole load of negative consequences from it with all the waste that is produced from the single use bottles. And, that figure is not taking into account the true water footprint which would include the packaging and distribution.  If we just turned on our taps and filled up a glass or a reusable water bottle, we could save that .39 liters.

For more information on this, check out – How Much Water Actually Goes Into Making A Bottle Of Water?

And if you want to read more about how bad our plastic bottle problem is, check out – A million bottles a minute: world’s plastic binge ‘as dangerous as climate change’ 

One action we can take immediately is to refuse to purchase single use plastic water bottles.  We can all carry our own reusable bottles or make an effort to drink from water fountains when they are available.

2. Join the Council of Canadians and the Wellington Water Watchers Efforts To Save Our Water

From the Council of Canadians website:

Several parts of Canada have faced long periods of drought in recent years due to climate change. Yet Nestlé, a giant bottled water corporation, continues to pump hundreds of millions of litres of groundwater every year from aquifers in Ontario and British Columbia. Nestlé pays less than one-twentieth of a penny per litre of water and then resells it for up to $2 per bottle. Every year, Nestlé ships hundreds of millions of single-use plastic bottles out of the community for sale all over North America for huge profits.

Join the boycott to stop Nestlé’s bottled water grab!  Take the pledge at: https://secure.canadians.org/page/20925/petition/1?ea.url.id=1306274

They are trying to get 75,000 people to take the pledge.  At the time of writing this, they were at 62,460.  Let’s help them get to 75,000!

The above link also takes you to a great video to watch to learn more about the issue.

 

These steps may seem quite small, but small actions multiplied by millions of engaged citizens really do have the power to change the world.