Matt Damon Talks Toilets at Clinton Global Initiative
Water.org co-founders Matt Damon and Gary White joined a panel discussion at CGI to discuss the impact of water and sanitation on health, education and economic development. Damon told the crowd some startling facts, such as that more people on earth have a mobile phone than have a toilet.
Here are some other facts about water you might not know:
More than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes. Nearly all deaths, 99 percent, occur in the developing world.3
Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.1
Of the 60 million people added to the world's towns and cities every year, most move to informal settlements (i.e. slums) with no sanitation facilities.6
780 million people lack access to an improved water source; approximately one in nine people.2
"[The water and sanitation] crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns." 7
An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the average person in a developing country slum uses for an entire day.7
Over 2.5X more people lack water than live in the United States.2
Photo: Sustenance Group