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Water might be the source of life but in many parts of the world, it can also be the cause of death. Millions of people around the world, particularly those in the global south do not have access to clean and safe drinking water.

Water borne diseases have historically been associated with life in developing countries where poor sanitation is a common problem. Sanitation refers primarily to wastewater and sewage treatment of human waste, but it also refers to systems that treat water between its source in nature and the consumer. Areas with poor sanitation are fertile ground for the spread of disease.

Infected individuals excrete millions of pathogenic microbes daily, most often into lakes, streams or other open water bodies. If healthy people drink the contaminated water while the microbes are still viable, they also become infected. Each new case of infection typically engenders multiple other cases.

Common Third World diseases such as cholera, dysentry and typhoid are spread by drinking water contaminated with the feces of an infected individual. Global warming could actually make things much worse.

A rise in lake and ocean temperatures is likely to cause them to become a breeding ground for bacteria, germs and parasites. Since floods most often trigger sewage overflows, they are also likely to raise the incidence of fecal-to-oral transfer of disease. Warmer weather and higher levels of humidity also translate to more mosquitoes, which can carry diseases such as the West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever.

This animated video weighs in on the issue of water borne disease.

As part of our commitment to participate in the Earth Hour 2 Earth Day challenge, we’ll be featuring guest bloggers from today until Earth Day on April 22nd. The first in our series of guest blogs will come from the president and co-founder of CoolPeopleCare.org and the EH2ED campaign, Sam Davidson…

Deep down inside, we’re all looking for something.

Maybe it’s the meaning of life, maybe it’s the rhythm of the universe, maybe it’s a group to belong to, a cause to fight for, or a person to love. But, here we are, nomads in search of something significant.

And often times, we’ll find that the very thing we were looking for has been right in front of us (or at least nearby).

It’s the same way with the need to use water wisely. Even though water is seemingly everywhere (it’s 60% of our bodies and 70% of the Earth, after all), we often overlook its power, its usefulness and its scarcity. Thus, we need to use it (and not abuse it) and use it well.

For nearly three years, we at CoolPeopleCare.org have been calling attention to the small and important things that can be done to make a difference. It is those small steps that add up to progressively larger ones, allowing us to traverse the great divide between the biggest needs in the world and our desire to meet them. Whether we talk about poverty, education, the environment, healthcare, or water, we believe that ultimately, a heightened awareness will have all of us walking down that path towards saving the world.

We (in the developed world) can get water in many forms, usually whenever we want. It comes out of our refrigerator doors, in a bottle, from the faucet and down the rainspout. We drink it, clean ourselves with it, clean the dog with it, and keep the plants fed with it.

But are we using it wisely? What all do we know about water and how we should be using it?

The great thing that sites like Cool People Care and Water – Use it Wisely do is that they make all of us stop and thing about each choice we make. Each decision has a meaning and potentially profound effects on various parts of our world. Maybe it’s inconvenient to stop during your daily routine and think about how long it takes to shave, how many bottles of water you buy, or whether or not you should be installing a sprinkler system. But trust us, those are decisions are worth thinking about.

It is precisely those questions that will have us connecting to that larger search I began this article with. If we’re willing to think about every part of our life, we’ll then be able to find what it is we’re looking for. Long journeys start with single steps and big answers start with single thoughts. 

And now is the time to think those thoughts, take those steps and save this world.
—
Sam Davidson
President and Co-Founder | CoolPeopleCare, Inc.
sam@coolpeoplecare.org | 615.260.3082

• WUIW taking EH2ED Challenge-If your toilet flapper doesn’t close after flushing, replace it. Happy Earth Day! #
• WUIW Daily Tip-Consult with your local nursery for information on plant selection and placement for optimum outdoor water savings. #
• WUIW daily tip-Make sure your swimming pools, fountains, and ponds are equipped with recirculating pumps. #
• Daily water tip-When the kids want to cool off, use the sprinkler in an area where your lawn needs it the most. #
• WUIW daily tip-If installing a lawn, select a turf mix or blend that matches your climate and site conditions. #
• How much water do you use – http://www.good.is/?p=16356 #
• WUIW daily tip-If your dishwasher is new, cut back on rinsing. Newer models clean more thoroughly than older ones. #
• WUIW daily tip-Use a grease pencil to mark the water level of your pool at the skimmer. Check mark 24 hours later to see if you have a leak. #
• looking for 23 great environmental bloggers to guest blog on wateruseitwisely.com/blog for EH2ED Challenge. Want to blog or know someone? #
• WUIW daily tip-Make sure there are water-saving aerators on all of your faucets. #
• Need 18 more guest bloggers to contribute to http://wateruseitwisely.com/blog/ before Earth Day. Is that you? Know someone? Please RT! Thx #

With World Water Day having having just past, and Earth Hour and Earth Day fast approaching, it’s a great time to ask yourself what you’re doing to contribute to environmental causes.

There will be a lot of activity over the course of the next month and opportunities to get involved. At Water – Use It Wisely, we want to make sure you’re making the most of your opportunity. The best part part is that to make a difference you don’t have to do much at all. It can be as simple as shortening your shower or replacing a light bulb. To see just how simple it can be check out our water saving tips (which you can get daily on Twitter too).

Also, visit our Facebook page and tell us what you’re planning to do during these next few weeks. Who knows, maybe together we can start a movement.

Think you’ve done everything possible to save water but still looking for ways to do more?  Are you a “gadget person” who likes to tinker with technology, from the simple to the complex?  You might be surprised to learn that there’s even more ways to save water by looking into new technologies.

The Water – Use It Wisely Web site, www.wateruseitwisely.com has a listing of innovative technologies that can help you conserve water and ultimately save money.  Following are a few ideas you may not have thought of before.

• Humidity Moisture Sensing and Control Products – Humidity moisture sensors override irrigation controllers when the humidity is at a high enough level, indicating that there’s no need to irrigate.

• Drip Stop Valves – These offer a permanent replacement to the old-fashioned rubber washers used in most compression faucets.  By stopping leaks, this saves millions of acre-feet of water each year.

• Rain Barrels –Rain harvesting is a simple concept.  Simply divert water from gutters into a mosquito-proof storage tank for future use.  Then, when you need water for non-edible purposes, recycle your rain water! 

• Surface Flow – Such systems are ideally suited for turf irrigation where runoff is an issue.  The technology takes advantage of the “wicking” action common to straw, sponges and other porous materials.  A single point of watering spreads out across the turf.  This leads to higher distribution efficiency, reduces water requirements by 25 to 40 percent and virtually eliminates water runoff.

• Smart Controllers — Large commercial water users use sophisticated equipment, complex scientific instruments and detailed calculations to fine tune their irrigation systems to supply only the water needed.  Like these advanced commercial systems, smart controllers take key weather data and combine it with basic site and sprinkler system information to calculate the exact amount of water needed to irrigate your landscape. 

• Aquazerve – This system operates off of pressure developed by your existing pool filtration system. The unit is mounted on the return line of your pool system, directly after your pool filter. The water is pressurized by the pool pump and delivered to irrigation through 1/4″ tubing.  The water savings is the amount of water you would normally discharge to waste during the draining process.

For more water saving tips, visit www.wateruseitwisely.com.  There, you can also take a user-friendly home family water audit and sign-up to receive a monthly water saving tip to remind you of your resolution and to keep you conserving all year long.  

Phoenix – March 9, 2009 – The Environmental Protection Agency launched its national WaterSense “Fix-A-Leak” Week campaign, yesterday in Phoenix, Arizona with a demonstration of how much water can be wasted in a typical American home from leaking toilets, showerheads and faucets.

In 2008, Arizona beat out 20 other states to win the WaterSense State Challenge by recruiting the most local agencies and utilities encompassing the greatest percentage of population to join WaterSense and increasing the population served by WaterSense utility partners. With strong government and utility partners in the area, Phoenix, Arizona is an ideal market to launch “Fix a Leak Week.”

Phoenix homeowners Dennis and Debra Jobin invited the EPA to set-up a display of two toilets, three faucets and a shower head dripping into a cistern for Phoenix residents and business owners to watch how quickly water can be wasted. “Allowing water to be wasted because you are not taking care of simple leaks is unjustifiable,” said Mrs. Jobin, “and we want to share our concern with the community”.

The display will be monitored daily to track the amount of water collected for the leaking fixtures. On March 16 the official week long celebration will kick-off with representatives from the EPA, Arizona Department of Water Resources and the City of Phoenix and include the installation of EPA WaterSense labeled products at the Jobin home. The display and WaterSense products were donated by Ferguson and Arizona Spray Products.

We’re all about developing water-saving habits here at Water – Use It Wisely so when an opportunity comes along to help a friend in the environmental habit-building game we jump at the chance. 

Our friends at “Cool People Care” have started the Earth Hour to Earth Day Challenge (EH2ED) to help people develop simple earth-saving habits between two very important upcoming dates. “Earth Hour,” the World Wildlife Fund climate change campaign is celebrated around the world at 8:30 p.m. on March 28 and the internationally recognized Earth Day  is April 22.  

Between those dates, Cool People Care will be sending out a daily email to help you develop simple habits that will go a long way in helping the environment. We’ve taken the challenge and we hope that you will too. 

Learn more about how to get involved here.

Original creator of Water – Use It Wisely, and green marketing expert, Park Howell, will be presenting at this month’s iG.R.E.E.N. web conference on creative ways businesses can reduce their carbon footprint while avoiding the “green hype” trap. Visit the iG.R.E.E.N. website and be sure to tune in on Wednesday, March 18 at 1:00 p.m. PST. 

Whether  you’re an organization just starting a green effort, a business looking to expand your current program, or an environmentally-concious consumer, this presentation will show you how to take those next steps. Also, after the presentation, participants can join Park for an extended conversation on the subject via Tiny Chat. We hope to see you there. 

Don’t forget to tune in for the presentation and chat details.

What does saving water have to do with GPS and high-tech treasure hunts? That’s what we’re trying to figure out – but we’re thrilled that a recent visit to a geocache location in Los Algodones in Baja California, Mexico revealed an addition of a Water – Use It Wisely magnet.

The exciting discovery was made by a relative of one of the Water – Use It Wisely Arizona regional partners. We don’t want to tell you the exact location of the magnet lest we’ll ruin the adventure for the next geocacher, but you can tell by the photo, it’s a good place to rest with a tasty beverage.

Since the rules of geocaching allow you to put something in and take something out, it may not still be at this exact location, but we’ll still be getting our message out there… There are a number of ways to save water and they all start with you. Water – Use It Wisely.

For the second year, SRP will be hosting the DesertWise Water Conservation Expo featuring a 50% discount on a Smart Irrigation Controller (final price $143.00). This discounted price is limited to the first 500 SRP water shareholders and/or power customers who successfully complete a required 30-minute installation workshop.

The first expo will be at SRP’s PERA Club facility at 1 E. Continental Dr. Tempe, AZ 85281, from 8:00 a.m. – noon on Saturday, March 07, 2009. The second expo is at the Glendale Public Library/Xeriscape Garden at 5959 W. Brown St. Glendale, AZ 85302 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 28, 2009. The expo will feature:

• Landscape experts on site to answer your questions
• 30-minute workshops on installation and programming of “smart” controllers
• Booths featuring energy efficiency and environmental programs offered by SRP.
• Water conservation companies demonstrating and selling the latest water-saving devices.

The first 200 people who register for and attend a workshop (100 each for Tempe and Glendale) will receive a free water-saving showerhead ( a $40 retail value). Register for the class online at http://www.srpnet.com/water/discount.aspx or call SRP at (602) 236-3333.

The March 28th expo will be in combination with Glendale’s Green Festival. This family-oriented event is a great opportunity for everyone to learn about water conservation, energy efficiency, Travel Green options and other green practices to help our environment! Free low-water-use plants for the first 100 people.

This free event features:

• Water conservation displays
• Green workshops
• Landscape classes
• Green exhibitors
• Radio Disney

Join in the fun! For more information and schedule of events call 623-930-3596 or go online at http://www.glendale az.com/waterconservation.

Southwest Build it Green Expo & Conference

The Southwest Build-It-Green Expo & Conference is Arizona’s largest green conference with over 500 anticipated exhibitors. The Build-It-Green Expo showcases sustainable products and services impacting every area of life. The conference is located at the Phoenix Convention Center, March 13 and March 14 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. On March 13th the expo is for businesses and March 14th for residential customers.

More than 2 million potential attendees will be targeted through local TV and cable stations, direct mail, radio, press releases and advertising in other local media, including movie theaters, The Arizona Republic and The Tribune. Outdoor campaigns will feature transit shelters and billboards throughout Maricopa County.

The Southwest Build-It-Green Expo & Conference is targeted to both the commercial and residential building industries.

Topics covered in the Southwest Build-It-Green Expo & Conference will include:

• Green Awareness
• Solar Power
• Water Efficiency
• Sustainability
• LEED Certification
• Green Return on Investment
• Existing Building Retrofitting
• Commercial Sustainable Product Use

The conference will showcase keynote speakers and educational seminars to help increase individual’s “green awareness”. To register and for more information go to www.builditgreenexpo.com or call 602-277-6045.

SRP Presents Earth Day at the Phoenix Zoo
Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.

The event will feature:

• Eco-Friendly entertainment
• Learn environmentally responsible behaviors
• Terrestrial tips to think about
• Measure your eco-footprint
• Join the Phoenix Zoo Planet Patrol
• Radio Disney

Free with regular zoo admission. For more details call 602.273.1341 or go to http://www.phoenixzoo.org/.