by the Staff at Blue Planet Run

Consider these facts about water:

1. One out of 6 people on the planet lack access to safe drinking water.
2. Each year 1.8 million children die from waterborne diseases (1 every 15 seconds).
3. Women and children walk on average 6K, almost 4 miles, to collect water each day.
4. One quart of wastewater can pollute 8 quarts of fresh water.
5. Half of the world’s 500 major rivers are seriously depleted or polluted.
6. Four quarts of oil discarded can contaminate 1 million gallons of water.
7. Poor sanitation and hygiene kill 200 people per hour.
8. Half of all hospital beds are filled with people suffering from waterborne diseases.
9. Simply washing hands can reduce 2 million deaths from diarrhea each year by 40 percent.
10. Each year 443 million school days are lost to children being sick from waterborne diseases.
11. The water we drink today is the same water the dinosaurs drank—there is no new water.
12. Our brain is 70 percent water and our bodies around about 60 percent water.
13. The average American uses 100 to 175 gallons of water per day. The average African uses 5 gallons per day.
14. Five gallons of water weigh 40 pounds. Imagine if you had to carry water!
15. It takes 5 liters of water to make 1 liter of bottled water.
16. On average, 3,350 gallons of water are used to water every round of golf.
17. In the United States 113 trillion gallons of water in the live in swimming pools that lose about 7,700 gallons each month from evaporation.
18. Of all the fresh water used on lawns, half is wasted due to bad timing or overirrigation.
19. It takes 2,900 gallons of water to make a quarter-pound hamburger.
20. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of coffee.
21. About 80 million more people are added to the planet each year.
22. One out of 5 of the world’s freshwater fish have become extinct, threatened, or endangered.
23. Only about 23 percent of all bottled water is recycled.
24. There are over 300,000 contaminated groundwater sites in the United States.

Image by Neal Jennings, 2009, Creative Commons license.

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