Clean Water for Everyone

Can you imagine having no clean water to drink? Or having to walk several hours to get just a bucket of water? In the graphic novel When Stars are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson, the main character, Omar has to line up with a yellow container to get clean water at a refugee camp. This is still happening in many places on Earth. According to a TED-Ed video called “When is water safe to drink?” by Mia Nacamulli, 800 million people in the world still don’t have access to clean water and 10 percent of the world population do not know if their water is safe to drink. This is a big problem because we need clean water to survive. One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) adopted by the United Nations is number 6, clean water and sanitation. We can accomplish this goal and reduce the number of communities that lack clean water with an engineering method called the point-of-use (POU) treatment.

Point-of-use treatment (POU) is very easy to use, has a low cost, is really efficient, and can be used in any environment. The method point-of-use is called this because water is treated at the “point” where it will be used. Communities do not need big central water systems for the POU to work. It uses the method of lowering mineral content through ionization and carrying out adsorption filtration with activated carbon. It also disinfects the water to get rid of waterborne pathogens which could make people vomit, have diarrhea and stomach aches. Sometimes, the pathogens could lead to death. In the TED-Ed video “Fresh water scarcity” by Christiana Z. Peppard, we learn that every fifteen seconds a child dies because of waterborne diseases. Therefore, each step of the point-of-use treatment is very important.

As we can see in the case of the point-of-use treatment, engineering is very important to us because without it, we would not be able to do a lot of things. When engineering something, different sectors work together to make something good and specific. For example, if someone wants to dig a well for groundwater, he or she might not be able to make a good well alone, but if people from different sectors help out, the well would be a very good one. Like this, the point-of-use system was probably made from people with different jobs like doctors, scientists, community officials, and engineers.

The POU treatment can help reach Sustainable Development Goal number 6. According to the website of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, billions of people around the world do not have access to clean water for drinking or hygiene. A Ted-Ed video by Christiana Z. Peppard, called “Where we get our fresh water”, informs us that 8% of fresh water in the world is used for domestic purposes and we cannot survive a week without water. The point-of-use treatment is a great method to use because it is low cost, easy to install, can be moved from place to place, and works well. This kind of method can be used in communities that are poor. Other methods such as desalination, where salt, minerals and other pollutants are removed from sea water, have disadvantages like being too bulky, costing too much, and using too much energy.

In conclusion, an important goal from the Sustainable Development Goals is number 6, which aims for clean water and sanitation for everybody. Still, many people around the world do not have access to clean water to survive. One of the ways of solving this problem is by using the point-of-use (POU) system which can be convenient and efficient. Can you imagine everyone having clean water to drink? Or being able to get clean water just by turning a tap?