Water
Submitted by Live Earth on 30 November, 2009 - 12:36
Say you are a poor farmer in a rural area in a developing country. Then your best bet out of poverty is to make more money. From where? From the field. You need to grow stuff. And because growing things need water, you need access to water. Water is money.
One options is to wait for the rain. It is a stressful option, because the rain might come too late, it might not come at all, or it might come all at once, all of which are bad. The other options is to take control over the water you need. That means getting a pump. What kind of pump? One that is affordable, available, and repairable. Ergonomic, and easy to operate.
Submitted by jgeeslin on 29 November, 2009 - 07:57
The National Resources Defense Council, have evaluated the quality of drinking water in nineteen major cities across the country and ranked them based on quality and compliance, availability of information, and source water protection. Surprisingly it found everything from rocket fuel, pesticides, lead, arsenic, etc in many samples!
Submitted by jgeeslin on 26 November, 2009 - 07:35
Alexandra Cousteau, the founder of Blue Legacy, a nonprofit dedicated to our beautiful water-based planet, and Live Earth Run for Water spokesperson, recently sat down with the folks at EcoStiletto to chat. Cousteau spent her days growing up on grand oceanic expeditions with her famous grandfather Jacques-Yves and father Philippe, and learned to scuba dive at the tender age of seven.
Submitted by Live Earth on 25 November, 2009 - 07:00
David Kuria wants to transform the way Kenyans think about toilets. His company, Ecotact, is building bright, beautiful structures in dense urban centers and slums, where Kenyans can pay a small fee to use a hygienic toilet. A seemingly simple intervention but with potential for enormous impact in urban areas where defecating into a plastic bag is a common practice (e.g., the infamous "flying toilets" in the Kibera slum).
Submitted by Live Earth on 23 November, 2009 - 10:40
Every Monday we profile a Dow Live Earth Run for Water partner organization that works toward providing solutions to the nearly 1 billion people who lack access to clean, safe water. To donate to one of these projects, visit liveearth.org/give.
Wasrag (the Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group) is a group of Rotarians who are dedicated to one of the aspirations of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals: to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
Submitted by jgeeslin on 22 November, 2009 - 14:00
Sand dams are an ancient water-saving technique that is thousands of years old and could prove to save millions of lives from drought. They are constructed out of concrete barriers 1-5m high and filled with sand. When seasonal rains fall, water collects behind the dam. The sand acts like a sponge and filters the water and slows evaporation. Clean water can be drawn for up to several months after the rains have fallen through pipes underneath the dams or by digging a hole in the sand.
Submitted by jgeeslin on 21 November, 2009 - 09:00
We should be much more aware that we may be using water at an extremely unsustainable pace. An astronomical amount of water is used for consumer products and food consumption known as your Water Footprint. This is the amount of water a person, company or nation uses to produce the commodities, goods and services consumed.
Water footprints can be hard to calculate, depending on how far up the chain of production you investigate, since everything you eat and buy used some water to produce. For example: to feed cows for beef, or to use in the factory that made your cell phone, or even the mass amount of water it took to make that plastic bottle of water - that you should have stopped using!
GOOD magazine has done a wonderful job of creating this sheet to help put things in perspective. Please check this out and really think about how your daily actions effect your water footprint.
Submitted by Andy Sternberg on 20 November, 2009 - 06:00
In recognition of Universal Children's Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly as a day to promote the protection, welfare and education of the children of the world, Global Water Challenge (GWC) today released "Clean Start: Focusing on School Water, Sanitation and Hygiene."
The report identifies the challenges and solutions associated with the global water crisis and its effect on children. It identifies access to clean drinking water as one of the leading health threats to children around the world today and the cause for millions of deaths and education loss each year.
Submitted by Andy Sternberg on 16 November, 2009 - 11:36
Live Earth Run for Water partner Pump Aid just sent in a great video detailing their efforts to establish sustainable and safe water solutions in communities in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Liberia.
The long-term effects of this work will ensure improved health and increased agricultural production in these areas. You can support Pump Aid's current projects using the widget below the video.
Submitted by jgeeslin on 14 November, 2009 - 12:36
Check out this new brick design! It looks like an ordinary brick, but is much more than that. Turn it over and and you can see one very different eco-friendly design change, one that will change the way bricks are made.
