Water shortage: How much water does man need

Drought, dried-up rivers, drying up springs: the effects of climate change are noticeable - and now also in Central Europe. In some regions of Germany, restrictions on water use are threatening this summer. But if dryness and aridity are already an issue in our latitudes, what is the situation in other regions of the world? And how much water does a person actually need per day? Access to clean water is a huge ecological and social problem. That is why we are working with various international organizations to improve access to clean water in many of the poorest countries in the world.

How much water does a person need?

Anyone who is thirsty or wants to wash needs clean water. Anyone who grows food needs it even more. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the minimum daily water requirement for a person to live a dignified life is 20 liters.

A person needs at least 20 liters of water per day - for drinking, cooking and hygiene. For comparison: the average daily water consumption in Germany per day and person is 130 liters. In Germany, water almost always flows from the tap without any problems. In increasingly hot summers, we discuss whether watering gardens needs to be regulated and whether water use in Germany needs to be temporarily restricted. That is important. But in many countries the situation is already dramatic. The WHO estimates that two billion people live without a safe drinking water supply. That is one in four people on earth. And that despite the fact that access to water has been a human right since 2015.

Clean drinking water – how we can sustainably improve access

The problem of water scarcity is gigantic and the inequalities worldwide are enormous. The climate crisis is exacerbating the problem, but it is often forgotten that there is enough water in many poorer countries in the Global South. What is often lacking is the infrastructure to pump the water or transport it to remote areas. In large countries like Kenya in particular, people rely on functioning wells, pumps and pipelines. If a public water supply breaks down in Germany, it is repaired fairly quickly. In poorer countries, people sometimes have to wait weeks for the pump of the only well for miles around to be repaired.

We at share want to make the world a little fairer and use our products to reduce inequalities, including in terms of water scarcity. Every drink from share therefore automatically includes a social donation when purchased, which goes to our drinking water projects with FundiFix and Action Against Hunger and thus ensures one person a day of clean drinking water in the 20-liter sense described above.

share Buy drinks and donate for more sustainable access to drinking water

How local experts repair wells

We work with the organizations Action Against Hunger (ACF) and FundiFix, whose teams of experts implement the projects on site and coordinate construction and repair work on wells. They also train volunteers from the communities in the respective villages who work in so-called WASH committees (WASH stands for water, sanitation and hygiene). These volunteers learn basic maintenance and repair measures as well as the correct, sustainable use of the wells within their communities.

Our track record so far is impressive: share has so far supported repairs, renovations and the construction of a total of more than 200 wells in Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia.

Smart hand pumps report errors in time

In Kenya, around 17 million people still lack a basic water supply. With our and, above all, your support, FundiFix is ​​installing smart hand pumps that use machine learning to constantly monitor the condition of the water infrastructure and, if certain components fail, report the impending failure of the water supply in good time. The aim is to be able to repair any damage to the water infrastructure within one to three days.