This TED Talk features inventor and student scientist, Depika Kuroop, recorded live at TED Women, 2016.

Every summer, my family and I travel across the world, 3,000 miles away, to the culturally

diverse country of India. Now, India is a country infamous for its scorching heat and humidity. For me,

the only relief from this heat is to drink plenty of water.

Now, while in India, my parents always remind me to only drink boiled or bottled water.

Because unlike here in America, where I can just turn on a tap and easily get clean, potable water,

in India, the water is often contaminated. So my parents have to make sure that the water we drink is safe.

However, I soon realized that not everyone is fortunate enough to enjoy the clean water we did.

Outside my grandparents' house in the busy streets of India, I saw people standing in long

lines under the hot sun, filling buckets with water from a tap. I even saw children who looked

the same age as me, filling up these clear plastic bottles with dirty water from

streams on the roadside. Watching these kids forced to drink water that I felt was too dirty to touch

changed my perspective on the world. This unacceptable social injustice compelled me to want to find a

solution to our world's clean water problem. I wanted to know why these kids lacked water, a substance

that is essential for life, and I learned that we are facing a global water crisis.

Now, this may seem surprising as 75% of our planet is covered in water, but only 2.5% of that

is freshwater, and less than 1% of Earth's freshwater supply is available for human consumption.

With rising populations, industrial development, and economic growth, our demand for clean water is increasing,

yet our freshwater resources are rapidly depleting. According to the World Health Organization, 660 million people in our world

lack access to a clean water source. Lack of access to clean water is a leading cause of death

in children under the age of five in developing countries, and UNICEF estimates that 3,000

children die every day from a water-related disease.

...