Green Options

Several San Francisco, California hotels promoted World Water Day - March 22 in collaboration with Blue Planet Run Foundation this past weekend. The book, Blue Planet Run: The Race To Provide Safe Drinking Water To The World, was placed in luxury suites as a gift to guests staying over the weekend.

You might just think of it as Sunday, but this particular Sunday, March 22nd, has a larger importance – it’s World Water Day, an international day of observance and action, drawing attention to the fact that over 1 billion people that share this planet do not have access to clean drinking water.

Born from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, World Water Day has a different theme every year. This year’s focus is on transboundary waters: sharing water, sharing opportunities.

Sunday March 22, 2009 is World Water Day. With the world water crisis representing one of the most significant public health issues facing the world today, we need to find ways to conserve this precious resource now more than ever.

The UN expects that 3.4 billion people will be living in countries defined as water-scarce by 2025. When water is scarce, people are forced to consume contaminated water.

Here are ten simple things you can do to cut down on your water consumption today:

In many parts of the developing world, people have to walk for miles every day just to get the water they need to drink and cook. To highlight that daily challenge, activists in Hialeah, Florida, plan to hold a Walk for Water walk-a-thon.

The walk is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 22 (which is World Water Day), at McDonald Park, 7505 W. 12th Ave. The event is part of Hialeah Water Fest 2008, which is being organized by Common Ground for Conservation and the city of Hialeah. Admission to the park is free, but there’s a registration fee for anyone participating in the walk-a-thon.

As the country experiences droughts in the Southwest and Southeast and absorbs the news of Lake Mead’s impending demise and pharmaceuticals in our drinking water, we can’t help but think about our water. Of course, despite our troubles, we are among the world’s most fortunate when it comes to safe, clean drinking water.

To help those in other parts of the world who are not as fortunate, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has developed The Tap Project, which runs this week through World Water Day on Saturday, March 23rd.

The concept is simple, but the results will be powerful: participating restaurants invite patrons to donate $1 for each glass of tap water that they normally receive for free. For every dollar raised, a child will have clean drinking water for 40 days. Since the lack of clean and accessible water is the second largest killer of children under five, this is an important outcome.