Problems with
Drinking Water
- Diseases caused by dirty drinking water.
- The poor suffer more. Drinking water is more expensive for the poor.
- Women disproportionally carry the burden of collecting and treating water
- Treating water by boiling on fuel wood causes global warming
- Plastic that is used to package causes an environmental disaster.
Access to drinking water
Globally, 4.4. billion people do not have access to treated water in their home [Dalberg, 2017] . This lack of access leads to the following problems.
Over 70% of the Nigerians population have a self-provided source of primary water; this means that there is no quality control of the water that people use for their daily needs. People get their water through a private Borehole or well, community well or from a water truck. Mostly this water is contaminated with bacteria that can cause diseases like diarrhea and a Typhoid. Even those that have public tap water supply can not safely drink the water, Therefore, nobody in Nigeria can drink their water from the tap and chances are very high that the primary source of water is not clear but contaminated. Although the GPD of Nigeria is growing, the country has trouble in reaching it’s targets for the MDGs.
According to Ministry of water resources report on Water Sanitation and Hygiene 2021, about 70% of drinking water at source and point of consumption within household are contaminated with E. Coli, 69% of public tap water are also found to be contaminated with faecal pathogens. Read full report here
Diseases caused by dirty drinking water
As a result of exposure to contaminated drinking water, each year nearly 150,000 children die due to diarrhea in Nigeria. As a result millions Nigerian children are stunted. The WHO estimates thath diarrhea can be reduced by 39% through household water treatment and safe storage. Worldwide, as a result of constant exposure to contaminated water around 525,000 children die every year of diarrhea
Water is expensive and the poor pay more
In order to get safe drinking water, Nigerian, in general, are used to boil their water using wood or gas or buy bottled or sachet water from various vendor. In a population of over 200 Millions, about 60 million of sachet water bag are consumed and dispose daily in Nigeria.
We at BrownNectar Nigeria limited observed that ways to acquire drinking water are related to income as well as local practices. Based on our observations and the patchy information from reports, we estimate that about 65% of the Nigerians buy packaged water for drinking. Boiling water is more common in rural areas and buying water is more common in urban areas. Although bottled water is more expensive, it is becoming more popular than boiling, because of the convenience of being able to drink it directly from the container.
On an annual basis, Nigeria households of 5 spent between 100 – 150 thousands Naira to get safe drinking water. This means that many households spend up to one monthly wage on drinking water.
Women waste their time collecting and treating water
According to a study done by Santa clara university women spend 125hours per year boiling water. This does not even count for collecting the water it selves, and there’s a disproportionate burden for women to provide safe drinking water to their families. Poor people pay a lot of money for bad quality of water.
Environmental disaster - plastic soup
The lack of accessible safe drinking water has made the majority of the country dependent on single use plastic waster bottles resulting in the consumption of 29 billion liters packaged drinking water in 2018 (=0.3 liter/person/day) PET bottles are the fifth most common item found in ocean debris, compromising around 155 of marine waste, and it takes between 500-1000 years to degrade.
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