Brave Blue World (a review)

“WE ENVISION A DAY WHEN EVERYBODY HAS ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION AND WE ENVISION THAT IN OUR LIFETIME.”

These are the words from co-founder of Water.org and actor, Matt Damon that is one of the activists that is featured in the film. Brave Blue World is a documentary showcasing the technologies and innovations that have the potential to solve the world's decade of water crisis. The film highlights advancements that have been taking place, often behind the scenes, to ensure the population has access to clean water and safe sanitation services and the environment is protected (IMDB, 2019). Including Matt Damon, the film also introduces different activists all around the world that is doing what they can to actually make at least a small change from a small house, to a progressive country water system. The film hopes to show the world that it is not too late for our world to be optimistic and produce more solutions to this crisis we have.

            The water crisis isn’t imminent, it is here now. The seeming forever water problem of the world is making every single researcher, environmentalists and innovators across the world has taken them at an absolute stop. Government has failed to show and actually say the scale of the problem. This blue planet of ours contains about 71% of its surface. With this massive number, only 2.5% of the 70% is fresh water, which means, a very small percentage of the world’s water is drinkable. With the limited access to actual drinking water, people of the planet Earth must change their original views to how they see, consume and value water. This is where the innovators and their projects across the four continents, who are featured in the documentary, enters the scene. As Mr. Paul O’Callaghan CEO of BlueTech Research, said: “This is the first time a documentary of this scale – bringing together global projects and partners – has been produced specifically on water.” We have the solutions and we have resolve to implement it.

            The documentary introduces the innovators and activists one by one and their loud and silent inventions and advancements that really is helping the world of its crisis in water. One of these activists is Jaden Smith and his JUST WATER that he co-founded. With their technology called “The Water Box”, they are giving access to free and drinkable water in Michigan where there is a lead contamination in their pipes that restricts the water to be drunk. It solely filters the water and gives off 10 gallons of water every 60 second. It is a mobile filtration system that is made available for the state that is having troubles with the contamination.

Another innovator this time from Kenya was introduced with her breakthrough technology that is a great help not only for the children of Kenya but adults and teens alike. With her company, Majik Water, Beth Koiji helps the children of Kenya to focus on their studies by giving them access to free and drinkable water right at their rooms. Before the company’s help came, the children often skip classes just to collect water from the river. While the river is available, its content was contaminated and cannot be taken. Thus, they thought of copying a species of beetle for acquiring drinking water from air. There are 6 times more water in the atmosphere than there is around us in the ground. Using this idea, she gets the air in the machine and then condenses it in the coil so that it can be converted into drinkable water.

Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.Org and an actor, introduces the problem that more than a million of children under the age of 5 dies every year because they lack access to safe water and proper sanitation. They try to break this problem by offering a very small loan that poor families can actually pay so that they can have their own water system in their homes.

Local innovators are also doing they can to show their support in this water campaign. Dixon Ochieng Otieno, the director of Government Relations in Sanivation introduces a simple way to help families in the slum that has no access to really clean and sanitized waste system. They are providing home toilets and proper waste treatment in an economically and stable way. They are manually cleaning the home toilets for they have no system to do so, and after collecting the said wastes they then proceed to process them in their factory and converts the feces into economically-efficient charcoal that is much more efficient than the regular one.

Large treatment facilities located in various places are known to the world. One of these is the Water Environment Federation in Chicago where they filter out phosphorous from the contaminated water of their State and then uses the extracted chemical as a commercial fertilizer. While there are some that tries to get rid of millions of energies in the water, there are some that actually allows it to happen. Aqualia cultures algae in the waste water that flows into their facility and then turns them into biogas that actually is an efficient form of fuel.

While there are many innovators and inventions that are made are introduced in this documentary, they are actually known companies and branded names that are able to do this and advertise what they have done easily by doing this. Some review says that this documentary kind of looked like a big advertisement to the companies that actually doing it, like acquiring their services and technology.

While they are doing this, we cannot deny that they are actually partaking in solving the greatest crisis in our time. Little by little this hope that they gave us will actually bear fruit and in the future, the state of our water usage will drastically change and we owe it to them that kickstarted it.