The Distance of Clean Water

[1] Rotary International asked us to raise global awareness about water sanitation this Earth Day. By measuring our daily walking distance, we wanted to compare access on a global scale. How far do you walk for clean water?

I’m a competitive person. If you attach some numbers to it and tell me it’s a challenge, we are going to see some cutthroat results. Right before the turn of Earth Day this April, Rotary International [2] reached out to Wiser.org about raising global water awareness. The next thing I knew, three pedometers were shipped to me and I found myself taking the long way back to my desk in our 800 square feet office.

According to UNICEF [3], 2.6 billion people—out of a 7 billion world population—lack access to improved sanitation facilities. 72 percent of these people are located in Southern Asia. 884 million do not use improved sources of drinking, and 37 percent of these people are concentrated in the Sub-Saharan Africa.

To further hone in on these grim statistics, across the board women are generally the ones left with the responsibility to collect water. WaterAid [4] found that up to 26 percent of their time is dedicated to this task alone. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, 18 percent of the population is relying on a source that might be more than 30 minutes away.

So, Rotary asked me, “How far do you walk for clean water?” Well, sadly enough, that’s a no brainer for me: I don’t have to. Women in Africa have to walk an average of 3.7 miles to and from the nearest improved sanitation facility each day. Each year, that amounts to spending 40 million hours per year to get clean water.

For about a week, Peggy, Gillian, and myself sported a pedometer on our hip to help bring awareness to this cause [5]. We kept track of the distance we walk each day to put into perspective the burden of inadequate access to water faced by women in developing countries. Here are our individual results: