Roca launches We Are Water Foundation

Bathroom manufacturer Roca is spearheading a campaign to help conserve the world’s water supplies with the launch of the We Are Water Foundation.

The We Are Water Foundation has been set up to help mitigate the effects of inadequate water across the world, raising awareness of what the United Nations has said will be the overwhelming global problem in the 21st century – the increasing scarcity of water.

The Foundation will raise awareness amongst institutions and the public about the need for a new sustainable culture of water management across the globe. It will also fund projects such as digging wells to bring water to people who would otherwise have to travel for hours just to fetch fresh water.

The Foundation has been launched across Roca’s global markets; its first project was to sponsor a documentary by international filmmaker Isabel Coixet, Aral, the Lost Sea.

The hard-hitting documentary details one of the world’s worst environmental disasters, the drying process undergoing the Aral Sea, on the Uzbeckistan/Khzakstan border. It is narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, with music by American actor Tim Robbins.

Roca UK managing director Alan Dodds said: “We are a market leader and with leadership comes responsibility. Millions of litres of water a day pass through our products, much of it wasted. It is our responsibility to look at ways of reducing that waste.”

The United Nations says that each person in the world needs between 20 and 50litres a day to meet their basic needs of drinking and keeping clean. “In developed countries we are using around four times that amount per head,” Dodds said. In other parts of the world they have far less.

The Foundation is working with four other organisations, Unicef, Educacion sin Fronteras, Intermon Oxfam and Foundacion Vincente Ferrer on various projects across the world.

“We are Water is part of our commitment to sustainability and to the communities most affected by the lack of water and its consequences. We aim to become a source of information in the management of environmental issues and sustainable development,” Dodds said.

Details of the campaign are at www.wearewater.org