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It all started with a Lost Boy of Sudan who just kept walking...

Water for South Sudan began when a Lost Boy from a rural village in southwestern Sudan returned home, only to find his father fighting deadly waterborne parasites.

After seeing his father's condition, Salva decided to take matters into his own hands and help his community access better water, sanitation, and hygiene practices.

And today, we call this movement Water for South Sudan!

5 MILLION

people in South Sudan live without daily access to safe water and sanitation services.

3.7 MILES
Children, often girls, spend their days walking for water. They walk an average of 3.7 miles per trip. Sometimes they make multiple trips to obtain water, carrying up to 40 pounds (18 kgs) of water each time.

10 PERCENT
of people in South Sudan have access to basic sanitation services

20 Years of Watering the Seeds of Change

Water Wells

We help drill, maintain, and restore water wells so the people in South Sudan have access to clean water all year-round.

Hygiene

We make sure to educate communities about hygiene so that the clean water from existing wells doesn't get contaminated due to poor hygiene practices.

Sanitation

Our sanitation program makes sure people have access to latrines so communities can prevent the spread of diseases.

Subscribe to The Wellspring, our monthly newsletter.

Stay up-to-date with our news and events.

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people in South Sudan live without daily access to safe water and sanitation services. Children, often girls, spend their days walking for water. They walk an average of 3.7 miles per trip. Sometimes they make multiple trips to obtain water, carrying up to 40 pounds (18 kgs) of water each time.

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Innovative Filtration System Makes Clean Water Accessible

For many people, water filters are nearly a requirement to have in the household. In general, they are able to eliminate some of the runoff that lands in the liquid from treatment centers and through the kitchen faucet. Sadly, as great as these filters are, they aren't as effective over time and many users don't perform maintenance on a regular basis with them. That's paved the way for a new reusable filter that nearly cleans out all the problems that could be in our water.

The Barron Research Group at Rice University has come up with SENT, or a supported-epoxidized carbon nanotube. It has the ability to eliminate over 99 percent of heavy metal contaminants that are hazardous to our health. This could be anything from mercury, arsenic, thallium, and commonly lead. It's important to monitor how much goes into our bodies as it can cause heart disease, birth defects, dementia, and other unfortunate symptoms.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum concentration levels for these metals. Older homes and places with an older pipe system are more prone to have one of the more toxic metals, lead. Anything above a level of 0.005 milligrams per liter of lead is considered extremely hazardous.

SENT's filter could be confused with a piece of cotton, and one amazing benefit is the ability to be reused. Andrew R. Barron, head of the researchers in the project, told ResearchGate that the process was pretty simple once the plan was in place. The team "grew carbon nanotubes onto quartz wool, then epoxidized them to make them active to adsorb metal ions." Then, they found out "vinegar reacts with the metal in solution to adsorb it."

"Adsorb" shouldn't be confused with "absorb." The former relates to the metal forming along the surface of the wool. The filter also is able to regenerate to add efficiency and be reused. In their testing, they were able to eliminate 99.4 percent of heavy metals from 83,000 liters of heavily contaminated water with just one gram of their product. That one gram could cost as little as 25 cents.

Thanks to the cheap costs, this would be a viable solution to clean waters in Mexico and developing countries. The country just below the United States mostly drinks some form of packaged water. Places like Ghana and Congo have limited sanitary facilities, while 40 percent of the Ugandan population has to travel 30 minutes to get fresh water.

Barron mentioned two reasons in the ResearchGate interview on why they put so much effort into the study: "First, was the desire to be able to remove toxic metals from drinking water in remote locations that didn't have power. The second was the Fukushima disaster, where there was a need to remove complex radioactive metal waste."

Cheap and efficient options are coming to help keep water safe to drink. 3D-printed monitoring systems would be a great accompaniment to the SENT filter system to provide the best information about H2O. This would also be beneficial to many areas in the United States, especially those that live in more isolated towns, have older pipes, or have gone through a crisis like the citizens in Flint, Michigan.

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Innovative Filtration System Makes Clean Water Accessible

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A team of Rice University scientists could have invented a more efficient and reliable way to remove toxins in our water. This filtering system, which looks like a ball of cotton, can remove over 99 percent of heavy metal contaminants and can regenerate itself.

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In 10 years, the world may not be able to feed itself

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A look at our ability to feed ourselves suggests things could get difficult sooner than previously thought.

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This machine makes planting a breeze !  INSIDER inventions

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Plastic Fibers Are Found in '83% of the World's Tap Water'

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A global tap water study raises fresh concerns about the implications of rampant plastic pollution on human and planetary health.

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A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here’s what it looks like now.

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12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.

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Ethiopian girls carrying water. Waterdotorg, CC BY-NC-SA

Imagine going through your day without access to clean, safe water in your home for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing whenever you need it. According to a new report from UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 2.1 billion people around the world face that challenge every day. And the task of providing water for households falls disproportionately to women and girls, especially in rural areas.

Water, a human right, is critical for human survival and development. A sufficient supply of biologically and chemically safe water is necessary for drinking and personal hygiene to prevent diarrheal diseases, trachoma, intestinal worm infections, stunted growth among children and numerous other deleterious outcomes from chemical contaminants like arsenic and lead.

I have carried out research in India, Bolivia and Kenya on the water and sanitation challenges that women and girls confront and how these experiences influence their lives. In my field work I have seen adolescent girls, pregnant women and mothers with small children carrying water. Through interviews, I have learned of the hardships they face when carrying out this obligatory task.

An insufficient supply of safe and accessible water poses extra risks and challenges for women and girls. Without recognizing the uneven burden of water work that women bear, well-intentioned programs to bring water to places in need will continue to fail to meet their goals.

Lost hours

Collecting water takes time. Simply to get water for drinking, bathing, cooking and other household needs, millions of women and girls spend hours every day traveling to water sources, waiting in line and carrying heavy loads - often several times a day.

The new UNICEF/WHO report states that 263 million people worldwide have access to water sources that are considered safe, but need to spend at least 30 minutes walking or queuing to collect their water. Another 159 million get their water from surface sources that are considered to be the most unsafe, such as rivers, streams and ponds. Water from these sources is even more likely to require over 30 minutes to collect.

UN WOMEN, CC BY-NC-ND

In a study of 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF estimated that women there spent 16 million hours collecting water each day. Women in a recent study in Kenya reported spending an average of 4.5 hours fetching water per week, causing 77 percent to worry about their safety while fetching and preventing 24 percent from caring for their children.

When children or other family members get sick from consuming poor-quality water, which can happen even if the water is initially clean when collected, women spend their time providing care. These responsibilities represent lost opportunities for women's employment, education, leisure or sleep.

Heavy loads

Water is heavy. The World Health Organization recommends 20-50 liters of water per person per day for drinking, cooking and washing. That amounts to hauling between 44 and 110 pounds of water daily for use by each household member.

And in many places, water sources are far from homes. In Asia and Africa, women walk an average of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) per day collecting water. Carrying such loads over long distances can result in strained backs, shoulders and necks, and other injuries if women have to walk over uneven and steep terrain or on busy roads.

The burden is even heavier for women who are pregnant or are also carrying small children. Moreover, pregnant women worry that transporting these heavy loads will lead to early labor or even miscarriage.

Even when a household or village has access to a safe water source close to home, residents may not use it if they believe the water is inferior in some way. As one woman told my research team in India:

Tube well water quality is not good... water is saline. Cooking is not good due to this water. Not good for drinking either. People are getting water from that neighbouring village.... for cooking we get water from the river.

In this community, the neighboring village was at least a kilometer away.

Fetching water can also be very dangerous for women and girls. They can face conflict at water points and the risk of physical or sexual assault. Many of these dangers also arise when women do not have access to safe, clean and private toilets or latrines for urinating, defecating and managing menstruation.

Water.org, CC BY-SA

Global demand for water is increasing. The United Nations forecasts that if current water use patterns do not change, world demand will exceed supply by 40 percent by 2030. In such a scenario, it is hard to imagine that women's and girls' experiences will improve without intentional efforts.

A focus on women's needs

When communities initiate programs to improve access to water, it is critical to ask women about their needs and experiences. Although women and girls play key roles in obtaining and managing water globally, they are rarely offered roles in water improvement programs or on local water committees. They need to be included as a right and as a practical matter. Numerous water projects in developing countries have failed because they did not include women.

And women should play meaningful roles. A study in northern Kenya found that although women served on local water management committees, conflict with men at water points persisted because the women often were not invited to meetings or were not allowed to speak.

Women who raise their voices about water concerns need to be heard. In Flint, Michigan, women were critical to revealing the city's water crisis and continue to push for changes.

We also need broader strategies to reduce gender disparities in water access. First we need to collect more data on women's water burden and how it affects their their health, well-being and personal development. Second, women must be involved in creating and managing targeted programs to mitigate these risks. Third, these programs should be evaluated to determine whether they are truly improving women's lives. And finally, social messaging affirming the idea that water work belongs only to women must be abandoned.

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called empowerment of the world's women " a global imperative." To attain that goal, we must reduce the weight of water on women's shoulders.
Editor's note: This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 22, 2016.

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Women still carry most of the world's water

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Imagine going through your day without access to clean, safe water in your home for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing whenever you need it. According to a new report from UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 2.1 billion people around the world face that challenge every day.

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Los Angeles can't make it rain, but it can shield its precious water with "shade balls" -- 96 million of them to be exact.

For months, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been releasing the black plastic balls to float on the surface of the 175-acre Los Angeles Reservoir in a massive drought relief project. The final 20,000 went in on Monday, with some assistance from LA Mayor Eric Garcetti.

By deflecting UV rays, the opaque spheres are expected to protect more than 300 million gallons of water from evaporating in Southern California's harsh sunlight every year.

LADWP was the first utility company to use this technology to protect water, according to a press release from Garcetti.

"In the midst of California's historic drought, it takes bold ingenuity to maximize my goals for water conservation," the mayor said. "This effort by LADWP is emblematic of the kind of creative thinking we need to meet those challenges."

Besides slowing evaporation, the shade balls prevent sunlight from triggering a dangerous reaction between bromite, a chemical occurring naturally in groundwater, and the chlorine used to disinfect the water. When sunlight interacts with those two chemicals, Plastic News explains, the suspected carcinogen bromate is formed.

The shade balls also deter wildlife from contaminating the reservoir, shield the water from wind-blow dust and discourage algae from forming on the water's surface.

City officials hailed the shade balls as very cost-effective. They run just 36 cents a piece, The Guardian noted, and require no additional construction or maintenance -- except to be rotated occasionally.

"Shade balls are a great example of how engineering meets common sense," LADWP general manager Marcie Edwards said in Garcetti's press release. "... As we make updates, we are mindful to be wise and practical with our investments. Shade balls are an affordable and effective way to comply with regulations, and help us continue to deliver the best drinking water to our customers."

Watching the shade balls cascade into LA's largest reservoir is also completely mesmerizing. Take a look at the photos below:

But the shade ball technology doesn't mean Los Angelenos can ease off their water conservation efforts. After a snowpack measure in the Sierra Nevada mountains in April revealed levels at a record low 6 percent of the long-term average for that time of the year, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) announced California's first-ever statewide mandatory water cutbacks, and those remain in effect.

Money could soon become available for bigger projects. Last month, California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, introduced emergency drought legislation in Congress, aimed at supporting other water projects in their dry state and helping poor rural communities that face severe water shortages.

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Millions Of 'Shade Balls' Protect LA's Water During Drought

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Los Angeles can't make it rain, but it can shield its precious water with "shade balls" -- 96 million of them to be exact. For months, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been releasing the black plastic balls to float on the surface of the 175-acre Los Angeles Reservoir in a massive drought relief project.

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Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)

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Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters) from The World Bank: Data

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We hear every day about the need to conserve freshwater. That goal seems sensible-although knowing if humankind is making any progress could be impossible without a reliable way to quantify how much water nations use. To find out, engineers Arjen Hoekstra and Mesfin Mekonnen at the University of Twente in the Netherlands calculated the water footprint of the world's countries as well as per capita water consumption in those nations.

Overall, the world is using 9,087 billion cubic meters of water per year. China, India and the U.S. consumed the highest annual totals: 1,207 billion, 1,182 billion and 1,053 billion cubic meters, respectively, followed by Brazil at 482 billion. But the water consumed per person in these and other countries varies considerably, due primarily to higher living standards or widespread waste among consumers. The U.S. had the world's highest per capita water footprint, at 2,842 cubic meters per annum. Meat consumption accounts for 30 percent of the American figure, and sugar consumption is responsible for another 15 percent, Hoekstra says. In India, where few people consume much meat, the individual footprint is only 1,089 cubic meters a year. The global annual average per capita is 1,385 cubic meters.

As you might guess, populous countries use a lot of water to produce their food and products, but inefficient agriculture or dependence on water-intensive foods such as meat can exacerbate demand. Some countries also export significant quantities of water in the form of food and products, complicating their own water balance, as shown in Scientific American's June 2012 Graphic Science column.

Hoekstra and Mekonnen went through exhausting calculations to figure out each nation's water footprint. Basically, they added three quantities: the consumption of rainwater (the so-called green water footprint); the use of ground- and surface water (blue); and the volume of gray water polluted (and therefore depleted). The specific calculations can be found in their online paper as well as its supplemental material.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Mark Fischetti

Mark Fischetti is a senior editor at Scientific American,. He covers all aspects of sustainability.

Credit: Nick Higgins

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We hear every day about the need to conserve freshwater. That goal seems sensible-although knowing if humankind is making any progress could be impossible without a reliable way to quantify how much water nations use.

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Unless someone takes the time to show them otherwise, they will grow up believing those limitations are true-and never reach their full potential. , a nonprofit based in Manchester, NH, wants to change that by showing girls that they CAN.

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River piracy may be climate change's weirdest effect. It just happened in Canada.

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Unless someone takes the time to show them otherwise, they will grow up believing those limitations are true-and never reach their full potential. , a nonprofit based in Manchester, NH, wants to change that by showing girls that they CAN.

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What We Can Learn From the Greening of China's Kubuqi Desert

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Public-private partnership, involving local communities, use of renewable energy. The Kubuqi desert project ticks the boxes.

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Big History Project helps us to explore big questions like this one: What if the tap ran dry? Writers Peter Stark and Amy Ragsdale explore the idea: http://b...

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This map shows the average exposure of water users in each country to baseline water stress, the ratio of total withdrawals to total renewable supply in a given area. A higher percentage means more water users are competing for limited water supplies.

Our analysis finds that 37 countries currently face "extremely high" levels of water stress, meaning that more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic, and industrial users is withdrawn annually.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The working paper on this page has been updated. The previous version listed Northern Cyprus as a country. It has been removed from this version, as it is an internationally disputed territory. The description has been revised accordingly.

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This map shows the average exposure of water users in each country to baseline water stress, the ratio of total withdrawals to total renewable supply in a given area. A higher percentage means more water users are competing for limited water supplies.

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The Carlsbad Desalination Project is the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. Located in Carlsbad, California it converts sea water into 50 million gallons of drinkable water per day. Learn more at our site or come for a tour.

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Tiny pieces of plastic are making their way into fish and shellfish found at the supermarket, a new study has shown.

The findings are part of a report prepared for the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency responsible for preventing marine pollution.

It's not yet been established what effect these tiny particles of plastic will have on the humans who consume them, the report says.

Researchers do know, however, that microplastics get into aquatic habitats from many different sources, says Chelsea Rochman, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and co-editor of the report.

It has infiltrated every level of the food chain in marine environments ... and so now we're seeing it come back to us on our dinner plates. - Chelsea Rochman, University of Toronto ecologist

These range from tiny fibres that come off the synthetic fabrics of our clothing, to bits of car tire that wear off on roads and make their way through storm drains into waterways, she says.

They also vary in size such that they can be consumed by marine animals both big and microscopic.

"It has infiltrated every level of the food chain in marine environments and likely fresh water, and so now we're seeing it come back to us on our dinner plates," says Rochman.

Gutting fish won't rid them of the bits of plastic they consume.

"These materials enter marine organisms, not just their guts but also their tissues," says Peter Wells, a senior research fellow with the International Ocean Institute at Dalhousie University.

And it's not just the plastic itself, but the stuff that comes along with it, that's a concern, says Wells.

Microplastics absorb or carry organic contaminants, such as PCBs, pesticides, flame retardants and hormone-disrupting compounds of many kinds, he says.

Wells says that until recently, the world's attention was on larger pieces of plastic in the ocean - the kind of garbage obviously visible to the naked eye.

Pictures of seabirds with plastic rings from six-packs of beer around their necks were shared with alarm, for example.

"Only when scientists started looking at plankton and water samples more carefully did they realize that a lot of the plastic was being broken down, not seen except under a microscope," says Wells.

Not just microbeads

​Among all the microplastics in our lakes and oceans, microbeads - those little exfoliants from facial scrubs and hand soaps - are the best known by the public.

"Microbeads are really what brought microplastics to the table in Canada as something that we would regulate and monitor," says Rochman. A federal government ban on toiletries containing microbeads will come into effect in 2018.

However, these are not the main source of microplastics, she says.

"The biggest source is likely larger plastic items that we can see during beach cleanups that enter the water and over time break down with the sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces of microplastic."

Think plastic bags, styrofoam takeout containers and plastic cutlery, says Rochman.

What does this mean for fish as food?

Kate Comeau, a registered dietitian and the spokeswoman for Dietitians of Canada, cautions consumers not to come to conclusions too quickly as a result of these findings.

"It's an important conversation," says Comeau, "but we don't want people running away from eating healthy sources of food."

Fish is an excellent source of protein, she says. "The fatty fish are also a great source of vitamin D, which we don't have a lot of food sources of in our Canadian diet. Fish is also a great source of iron, and those omega-3 fats are really important in terms of our heart health."

Rochman stresses that more research is required before anyone lets microplastics determine what's for dinner.

"What we really need to do is a risk assessment ... nobody has done that for microplastics."

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Microplastics found in supermarket fish, shellfish | CBC News

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Tiny pieces of plastic are making their way into fish and shellfish found at the supermarket, a new study has shown. The findings are part of a report prepared for the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency responsible for preventing marine pollution.

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Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.

Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for an investigation by Orb Media, who shared the findings with the Guardian. Overall, 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibres.

The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency's headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York. Lebanon and India had the next highest rates.

European nations including the UK, Germany and France had the lowest contamination rate, but this was still 72%. The average number of fibres found in each 500ml sample ranged from 4.8 in the US to 1.9 in Europe.

The new analyses indicate the ubiquitous extent of microplastic contamination in the global environment. Previous work has been largely focused on plastic pollution in the oceans, which suggests people are eating microplastics via contaminated seafood.

"We have enough data from looking at wildlife, and the impacts that it's having on wildlife, to be concerned," said Dr Sherri Mason, a microplastic expert at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who supervised the analyses for Orb. "If it's impacting [wildlife], then how do we think that it's not going to somehow impact us?"

A magnified image of clothing microfibres from washing machine effluent. One study found that a fleece jacket can shed as many as 250,000 fibres per wash. Photograph: Courtesy of Rozalia Project

A separate small study in the Republic of Ireland released in June also found microplastic contamination in a handful of tap water and well samples. "We don't know what the [health] impact is and for that reason we should follow the precautionary principle and put enough effort into it now, immediately, so we can find out what the real risks are," said Dr Anne Marie Mahon at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, who conducted the research.

Mahon said there were two principal concerns: very small plastic particles and the chemicals or pathogens that microplastics can harbour. "If the fibres are there, it is possible that the nanoparticles are there too that we can't measure," she said. "Once they are in the nanometre range they can really penetrate a cell and that means they can penetrate organs, and that would be worrying." The Orb analyses caught particles of more than 2.5 microns in size, 2,500 times bigger than a nanometre.

Microplastics can attract bacteria found in sewage, Mahon said: "Some studies have shown there are more harmful pathogens on microplastics downstream of wastewater treatment plants."

Plastic fibres found in tap water across the world

Microplastics are also known to contain and absorb toxic chemicals and research on wild animals shows they are released in the body. Prof Richard Thompson, at Plymouth University, UK, told Orb: "It became clear very early on that the plastic would release those chemicals and that actually, the conditions in the gut would facilitate really quite rapid release." His research has shown microplastics are found in a third of fish caught in the UK.

The scale of global microplastic contamination is only starting to become clear, with studies in Germany finding fibres and fragments in all of the 24 beer brands they tested, as well as in honey and sugar. In Paris in 2015, researchers discovered microplastic falling from the air, which they estimated deposits three to 10 tonnes of fibres on the city each year, and that it was also present in the air in people's homes.

This research led Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King's College London, to tell a UK parliamentary inquiry in 2016: "If we breathe them in they could potentially deliver chemicals to the lower parts of our lungs and maybe even across into our circulation." Having seen the Orb data, Kelly told the Guardian that research is urgently needed to determine whether ingesting plastic particles is a health risk.

The new research tested 159 samples using a standard technique to eliminate contamination from other sources and was performed at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. The samples came from across the world, including from Uganda, Ecuador and Indonesia.

How microplastics end up in drinking water is for now a mystery, but the atmosphere is one obvious source, with fibres shed by the everyday wear and tear of clothes and carpets. Tumble dryers are another potential source, with almost 80% of US households having dryers that usually vent to the open air.

"We really think that the lakes [and other water bodies] can be contaminated by cumulative atmospheric inputs," said Johnny Gasperi, at the University Paris-Est Créteil, who did the Paris studies. "What we observed in Paris tends to demonstrate that a huge amount of fibres are present in atmospheric fallout."

Plastic fibres may also be flushed into water systems, with a recent study finding that each cycle of a washing machine could release 700,000 fibres into the environment. Rains could also sweep up microplastic pollution, which could explain why the household wells used in Indonesia were found to be contaminated.

In Beirut, Lebanon, the water supply comes from natural springs but 94% of the samples were contaminated. "This research only scratches the surface, but it seems to be a very itchy one," said Hussam Hawwa, at the environmental consultancy Difaf, which collected samples for Orb.

This planktonic arrow worm, Sagitta setosa, has eaten a blue plastic fibre about 3mm long. Plankton support the entire marine food chain. Photograph: Richard Kirby/Courtesy of Orb Media

Current standard water treatment systems do not filter out all of the microplastics, Mahon said: "There is nowhere really where you can say these are being trapped 100%. In terms of fibres, the diameter is 10 microns across and it would be very unusual to find that level of filtration in our drinking water systems."

Bottled water may not provide a microplastic-free alternative to tapwater, as the they were also found in a few samples of commercial bottled water tested in the US for Orb.

Almost 300m tonnes of plastic is produced each year and, with just 20% recycled or incinerated, much of it ends up littering the air, land and sea. A report in July found 8.3bn tonnes of plastic has been produced since the 1950s, with the researchers warning that plastic waste has become ubiquitous in the environment.

"We are increasingly smothering ecosystems in plastic and I am very worried that there may be all kinds of unintended, adverse consequences that we will only find out about once it is too late," said Prof Roland Geyer, from the University of California and Santa Barbara, who led the study.

Mahon said the new tap water analyses raise a red flag, but that more work is needed to replicate the results, find the sources of contamination and evaluate the possible health impacts.

She said plastics are very useful, but that management of the waste must be drastically improved: "We need plastics in our lives, but it is us that is doing the damage by discarding them in very careless ways."

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Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals

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Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health. Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for an investigation by Orb Media, who shared the findings with the Guardian.

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Learn more about water footprints concepts, how they are calculated and the difference between direct and virtual water use.

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The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. We aim to remove 90% of the floating plastic with the help of ocean cleanup systems and river interception technologies.

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Death of a River - The Colorado River Delta

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Reading the Ogallala Aquifer: Saving Ancient Water | NBC News

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India receives adequate rainfall for its billion-plus population, but the country is facing a crisis as water is diverted from poor rural areas to fill water tanks and swimming pools in richer cities like Delhi. Jill McGivering reports.

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Here's how Flint's water crisis happened

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Tips to Use Less Plastic - Green Education Foundation | GEF | Sustainability Education

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As part of the Waste Reduction Challenge, try cutting back on the amount of plastic you use.

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(Image credit: The Seabin Project)

Two Australian surfers are trying to tackle the planet's water pollution problem head-on, by developing a device that functions as an automated floating trash bin for the world's oceans.

The device, called the Seabin, can be placed in the water, attached to a floating dock in a marina, and is connected to an onshore water pump. The pump generates a flow of water into the container that collects trash and other debris, according to the inventors.

Plastics and other forms of water pollution have become a big problem, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council. Plastics, in particular, make up a significant portion of the stuff floating around in the world's oceans; scientists estimate that 4.4 million to 13.2 million (4 million to 12 million metric tons) tons of plastic washed ashore in 2010, Science magazine reported. That is the same weight as more than 435 copies of the Eiffel Tower all stacked together. [ In Photos: World's Most Polluted Places]

The Seabin's inventors, Pete Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, met through their mutual love of water sports, according to the project's Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, which wrapped up in January. Eight years ago, Turton came up with the idea to create a rubbish bin for the water, Ceglinski told Live Science in an email.

There are a few existing ways to clean up marinas and waterways, the inventors said. One is to use trash boats with built-in nets to scoop up garbage as the boats motor around. Marina workers also walk around and scoop up trash where it gathers in the corners of docks. These methods are effective at removing debris, but they have some drawbacks, Ceglinskiand Turton said.

For one, trash boats are very expensive to operate and maintain, Caterina Amengual, general director of the environment for Spain's Balearic Islands, said on The Seabin Project's Indiegogo page. Marina workers face a similar problem: Their efforts cannot keep up with the amount of pollution in the water, Eli Dana, general manager of Newport Shipyard in Rhode Island, stated on The Seabin Project's Indiegogo page.

Turton and Ceglinski said their initiative could help solve these problems.

The Seabin is an "an automated marina rubbish bin that collects floating rubbish, debris and oil 24/7," the inventors said on their Indiegogo page. The basic design is pretty simple. The device consists of a cylindrical container lined with a natural fiber catch bag and a water pump system with an optional oil/water separator. [ Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

The water pump (run by an onshore power source) would create a flow of water into the bin that carries floating trash with it. These pieces of garbage would get caught in the fiber catch bag (made from a natural fiber called hessian). The water would get sucked out of the bin and up the water pump, and then pumped back into the marina.

"The Seabins will [be] made from polyethylene plastics using a mix of recycled ocean plastics, recycled plastic and new plastic," Ceglinski wrote in an email. "All other components will be materials we [can] reuse or recycle (i.e. aluminum, stainless steel)."

The Seabin Project hopes to have a Seabin production operation in place by the end of this year. Additionally, the group wants to create a small carbon footprint for the product and put a strong emphasis on local production, using sustainable materials in production and finding a way to reuse or recycle the trash collected in the Seabins.

"Eventually, we expect to be reusing all our plastics we have caught and not have it go to [a] landfill," Ceglinski said.

The project's Indiegogo campaign ended Jan. 8 and raised a total of $267,667 - more than 15 percent more than its original goal.

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Surfers Invent Floating Trash Bin to Clean Up World's Oceans

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(Image credit: The Seabin Project) Two Australian surfers are trying to tackle the planet's water pollution problem head-on, by developing a device that functions as an automated floating trash bin for the world's oceans. The device, called the Seabin, can be placed in the water, attached to a floating dock in a marina, and is connected to an onshore water pump.