Yesterday I was nominated to take the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. While I like the idea of spreading awareness about, and donating to fight a terrible disease— I loathe the waste this activity creates. Im no economist, but heres some simple math: Facebook says over 1.2 million unique videos have been posted for this challenge, for this purpose, lets figure each video had only one participant, one bag of ice, and one 5-gallon bucket. The average bag of ice costs $2 minimum at most grocery stores, and a 5 gallon bucket, which most people dont have lying around, costs about $2.50. Lets say you put one bag of ice and 4 gallons of water in each of those buckets. That is 4.8 MILLION+ GALLONS of water that was absolutely WASTED. and 5.4 MILLION DOLLARS spent on Buckets and Ice, also not helping to cure this disease. Washington, Oregon, and California, just to name a few, have massive, thousand acre forest fires, and droughts. From where I write this in Colorado, there is a water watch in which people are limited to 5 gallons of water per day at campsites. For the record, I donated to the ALS Association, and you can here: alsa.org/ but please, stop wasting money and water. And if you really care about the people affected by this disease, please understand and explain the symptoms and realities, and not repeat an activity that martyrs and honors only the several famous, athletic victims. Thanks.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:47:27 +0000
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