A Lack of Global Wastewater Treatment Affects Everyone

For those living in countries like the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom, the destination of our wastewater is not so much as an afterthought. For approximately 1.8 billion people in the world, the untreated water they utilize contains feces¹. Being that such a large population of people were affected by unclean water, it makes sense that the United Nations made wastewater the theme for the 2017 World Water Day.

"Why should we care about waste water?" you might ask. If the amount of people utilizing feces-tainted water and the fact that 289,000 children under 5 die each year due to diarrhoeal diseases² caused by poor water and sanitation doesn't alarm you, then the fact that water is a finite resource should. Even a country as industrialized and advanced as the initially mentioned only top out at about 70% recycled water. That number drops all the way to 8% for those living in the most destitute nations. As a resource that everyone needs to survive, creating sustainability in countries is vital to ensuring that the most precious resource we have, is conserved.

In areas where water is particularly scare, the lack of water treatment also makes agriculture even more of a struggle. Often, this tainted water  is still used for farming which becomes a health concern for not only the farmers in the fields, but consumers of the produced goods. As a reader, you may very well be ingesting these food items being that many food items have to be imported.

Access to clean water is an issue that effects everyone on some level. Do you part in this global endeavor through saving a child's life by clicking here. 

Sources:

¹http://www.worldwaterday.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fact_sheet_WWD2017_EN.pdf
²http://www.wateraid.org/what-we-do/the-crisis/statistics