WANTED: CLEAN DRINKING WATER FOR EVERYBODY

BLOGPOST, Mon 30 August 2010 12:43, Yvonne Keijzers

Water is one of the biggest issues regarding climate change and sustainability. The lack of clean tapwater is a serious problem that affects a lot of people. There is an abundancy of seawater, but a big part of the world doesn't have access to clean drinking water. And things are going to get a lot worse in years to come. Desalination could be a solution in the future, but for now, this solution requires way too much energy.

Awareness

In The Netherlands there are some beautiful initiatives to create awareness for this problem: De Dopper  and jointthepipe.org. Both use the internet and crowd sourcing to create awareness and help to solve the problem. De Dopper is an initiative of Merijn Everaarts. He asked people to create a sustainable waterbottle. With De Dopper, people don't need to buy unsustainable, expensive bottled water, they can reuse De Dopper each time. With each Dopper sold, NGO Simavi is supported. De Dopper also has an iPhone App, so people can check where they can get fee drinking water. With his project De Dopper want to create awareness, not only to the problem of drinking water, but also of the problem of the Great Pacific garbage patch.

Beautiful and sustainable bottles

The fun thing is, the bottles are really beautiful. That's one thing they have in common with Jointhepipe.org. Jointhepipe.org is a non profit Foundation based in Amsterdam. Is was founded by Geraldo Vallen. They want to create a community of tap water drinkers who want to build the longest water pipe to bring water everywhere on earth. When you buy a JTP bottle, you can choose for yourself which project you want to support.

As with a lot of good initiatives (and people who put a lot of (voluntary) effort in projects), these project deserve to get a lot of attention. It is a pity both initiatives aren't working together yet, because they seem to be born for each other. Maybe in due time, they will.

Yvonne Keijzers