HR=Humans Represent: Friday is BAD

…yep, BAD – Blog Action Day!

If you haven’t been paying attention the last few years, Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.

This year bloggers are all writing about Water! Why water? Did you know that almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water? That works out to about one in eight of us who are subject to disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted. Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue, it is also an environmental issue, an animal welfare issue, and a sustainability issue.

Blog Action Day History

Founded by Collis & Cyan Ta’eed in the summer of 2007. With the support of their team at Envato in Australia as well as numerous volunteers, they recruited thousands of bloggers to write about the issue of Environment on October 15, 2007. Last year, more than 13,000 bloggers participated from 152 countries. This year Collis & Cyan has turned things over to Change.org, the world’s leading blog network for social issues, in hopes of expanding its reach.

What You Can Do

The purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. So, simply take a single day out of your schedule and focus it on an important issue pertaining to water. By having bloggers everywhere doing so on the same day, the blogging community is able to change the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on this one issue. In order to participate, all you need to do is write just one post on your blog about the issue of water on October 15th. Then, don’t forget to register your blog on the Blog Action Day website. They’ll in turn add a link to your blog! Or if you’re not a writer, or pressed for time, be sure to sign their petition!

Not Sure What To Write About? Here’s Some Suggestions From Change.org:

• Water as a Human Right: In July, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over objection from the United States. Today, nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water. More Info »
• Women: In Africa, women are predominantly responsible for collecting water. They walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 40 pounds to gather water for their community, which is usually still not safe to drink. More Info »
• Polluted Oceans: Pollution bad for the environment, and expensive to manage. Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year. More Info »
• Uninhabitable Rivers: 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. Consider also that 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually. More Info »
• Food Footprint: Do you know the water footprint of your food? For example, 75 liters of water are required to make a glass of beer and 15,500 liters to make a kilogram of beef. More Info »
• Water Wars: Many scholar, researchers and political analysts attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. A report commissioned by the UN Development Program found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa. More Info »
• Technology Footprint: Each day an average of 500 billion liters of water travel through US power plants to power all the technology that we use each day. For example, that shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million liters to charge those alone. More Info »
• Bottled Water: Although people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year is drank. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled. More Info »
• Farmers vs. Animals: As water becomes scarcer in Africa, farmers not only compete with each other but also with other animals, including elephants. Forced into close contact with farmers, elephants destroy crops and wreak havoc on agriculture, causing farmers in turn to resort to violence in order to protect their crops and water sources. More Info »
• Children: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. More Info »
• Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now took 400 gallons of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 1800 gallons. Not wearing cotton? The dyes and synthetic fibers used to make your clothes create waste that’s among the many contributors to water pollution. More Info »
• Water Celebrities: A number of celebrities have taken up the cause of water and water rights, including Matt Damon , Adrian Grenier , Leonardo DiCaprio , and Will & Jada Smith .

Happy writing!