Water that is…well wine too but that’s another post.
I drink a lot of water. Water for my morning tea every day, a glass of water with my lunch and even if I am drinking wine with my dinner I am also drinking water with it too. I keep a glass or bottle of water handy wherever I am. The last thing I do before I go to bed each night is to fill a glass of water to put by my bedside in case I wake up thirsty in the night. I bought one of those stainless steel water bottles to take with me when I go to the gym. It holds about 1 liter and I can go through it easily while I’m at the gym. Every time my husband and I go for a long road trip the first thing we make sure we have stocked in the vehicle is water.
It is something that is so common and available to me. I look out my front window onto a large beautiful freshwater lake. I can pour pure clean water into my glass from a tap in my home…whenever I feel like it. Not a big deal right? Well it is a huge deal for the one billion people on our planet that don’t have access to clean drinking water. One billion people!
I’ve recently visited the Children’s Safe Drinking Water website and was shocked at some of the statistics I read there.
- Everyday more than 4,000 children in developing countries die, simply because they don’t have clean drinking water.
- More than 1 billion people do not have access to safe water.
- Diarrhea caused by drinking contaminated water remains a leading cause of illness and death among infants and children in the developing world.
- About 1.8 million children die every year due to diarrheal diseases.
- More children die from diarrheal diseases like cholera and dysentery than from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.
It isn’t all bad news though because there is a great solution being offered. It’s the PUR packet. A quick, simple and easily transportable way to clean dirty water. The PUR packet turns 10 liters of dirty potentially deadly water into clean and drinkable water. It is small and easy to transport so it can reach a large population easily. The PUR packet was developed by Proctor and Gamble in collaboration with the US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention and is considered an effective technology by the World Health Organization. Please visit the website for more in depth details as well as some interesting videos demonstrating their use. It is really worth the visit. 
I discovered that the packets only cost 10 cents each and that each one equals 10 liters of clean water. $1 gives a child clean drinking water for 50 days. $7.50 gives a child clean drinking water for 1 year and $30 (US) gives a family clean drinking water for a whole year.
I’ve just donated to give a family clean drinking water for a year.
Now as I appreciate my clean drinking water with every sip I take I will raise my glass and say “Svaha” to those little PUR packets.
when I am not hydrated. It looks similar to an orange peel. Drink water!