If you have gone to the bathroom on-campus anywhere this past week, you most likely sat down to read a conspicuously-placed sign declaring, "Water privatization, freshwater scarcity, melting glaciers: These problems are real and they affect you! Think Before You Flush - Come to the EPIIC Symposium." So just what should you be thinking about before flushing? Oil and water, perhaps? If that was your guess, then bravo! You are quite right, and as a reward you may now read this insomniac EPIICer's thoughts on the latter subject: WATER.
Consider the world's water resources - over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered in water, just 0.01 percent of which is fresh water. 74 percent of that freshwater, however, is frozen in glaciers and the polar icecaps, meaning that only 0.008 percent of all freshwater is available for our consumption, found in rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. Eight thousandths of a percent. Clearly, our freshwater resources are limited. And when you consider that 1.1 billion people in the world have no access to safe water, you might even call them in crisis.
This crisis, however, is not due to a lack of enough water to go around. Think about how much water we consume in the United States on any given day - for drinking, taking showers, flushing toilets, washing our hands, food, dishes and clothes. Think about the water spent to irrigate our crops, fill our pools, water our gardens, produce our electricity and keep our golf courses emerald green.
All told, these cumulative uses combine to put the average U.S. per capita consumption of water at 160 gallons per day, while more than half of the world's population lives on a mere 25 gallons daily. Despite global water scarcity, we in the developed world are swimming in freshwater. It is safe for us to assume that every faucet, hose or drinking fountain we turn on will pour clear, uncontaminated water until we choose to turn it off. Think about it - we have easier access to Cheetos than most of the world has to clean drinking water.
If that discrepancy is not shocking enough for you, let's look back to the toilet. Every time you flush, an average of six liters of water swirl down the drain, whereas an average person in the developing world has access to 10 liters a day for the most basic life necessities. This means that if you have peed twice today, you have already used more water than the average person in the developing world will have today for all their drinking, washing and cooking needs.
Unfortunately, lack of water and uneven distribution are not the only issues. The quality of the water available is also a major concern for people in more than 80 water-stressed countries. Over 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to sufficient sanitation - two-fifths of the world population. This insufficient sanitation translates into disease and death for millions, most of them children who are most susceptible to diarrhea and water-borne diseases.
Every year 2.2 million people die of illnesses associated with unsafe drinking water, lack of sanitation and poor hygiene, 1.8 million of whom are children five-years-old and younger. A child dies every 15 seconds from contaminated water-related diseases that could be easily prevented, for a daily death toll of 6,000 children. People, that is more children dead than all the victims killed on Sept. 11. Even as I type it is hard for me to fathom this. Six-thousand kids die every day who would survive if they could just drink and bathe in water as clean as that with which we flush our toilets. This is all the more outrageous when one considers that it would cost only $16 billion a year to cut the number of people living without safe water and sanitation in half. To put that in perspective, $16 billion is less money than North Americans and Europeans spend a year on pet food.
So what leads us to invest more in Meow Mix than in the lives and welfare of over 2.5 billion people? How is it that the populations of water-rich countries like the D.R. Congo are dying for lack of clean water, while golf courses and swimming pools sparkle green and blue in the California desert? What roles do water privatization, fossil fuel use, climate change, pollution and international security play in creating these conditions? And what can we as individuals do about it?
To discuss these questions and more, I enthusiastically encourage you to attend the EPIIC Symposium. Sacrifice a couple latt?©s to buy a ticket and come learn about the liquids that make our world go 'round. Or, if you do not come, I ask you to at least remember these questions, remember those 2.6 billion people, those 6,000 kids who died yesterday, today and will die tomorrow, and recognize that your own water consumption habits matter. The water you save on a daily basis by turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth, cutting five minutes off your shower time, flushing only when you really need to ("if it's yellow let it mellow...") and telling your friends to do the same makes a difference.
A final thought - a Turkish businessman once said, "Millions of people have lived without love. No one has ever lived without water." I do not share this with you as a quote to put your romantic woes in perspective. Rather, I hope it serves to remind you that water is life, yours and everyone else's. You have the right and responsibility to understand where your water is coming from and where its future lies. Demand the right, accept the responsibility and join us for an exciting and enlightening Symposium.
Jessica Berlin is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
