Each morning, the average college student gets up (probably after 9 a.m.), turns on the light, goes to the bathroom, showers, makes a cup of coffee and hurries to school.

For most of the world's population, most of these simple tasks are impossible. Globally speaking, electricity, toilets and clean water are not easy to come by.

Can you imagine going through your morning ritual in front of a rush-hour train? In many slums this an unfortunate reality.

The average female slum-dweller often gets up before 5:30 a.m. and waits in line at the water tap hoping it won't shut off before she can fill her bucket. She then walks to the women's section of a grassy field to go to the bathroom.

If it is a good day, she can walk to the dirty river and wash herself. She then makes her way to work, probably for a labor-intensive, backbreaking 10-hour day.

Despite her hard work, her children are sick with diarrhea from the dirty water they must drink and are severely malnourished.

While clean water flows freely from our taps, drinking fountains and showers, water is dirty and difficult to access for more than a billion people.

Each year, 1.8 million children die from diarrhea, more than the number of soldiers and civilians killed in war. Dirty (or no) water is more dangerous than an AK-47.

This month the United Nations Development Program released its annual Human Development Report. This year's report, "Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis," discusses that scarce resource that so many in the West take for granted.

The report discusses global water inequality and government failures to provide water to its poorest citizens — and the inequality is stark.

According to page 35 of the report, "The 25 billion liters of mineral water consumed annually by U.S. households exceeds the entire clean water consumption of the 2.7 million people in Senegal lacking access to an improved water source."

Americans often hear such depressing numbers in the headlines and fail to connect the information to their own lives. On a BBC forum, for example, an American stated, "How we use water in Massachusetts will make no difference to people in Arizona or India."

Have you ever bought bottled water? Do you take showers when you're not dirty? Do you wash your car when it's raining or water your lawn in mid-August?

If you can answer yes to any of those questions, you've contributed to the water crisis. And every American can answer yes, including me.

Our society prides itself on excess. Success in life is largely determined by how much you can own. When it comes to the world's most precious resource, this is not a realistic perspective.

Much bottled water comes from reservoirs in developing nations. Although most Americans can freely drink from their own taps, many buy water shipped halfway across the world.

While there are children drinking virtual sewage water, some Americans are too good for the water in their own taps.

It is easy to separate oneself from the problems in other countries, but the countries of our world are inextricably linked. The decisions of the rich and powerful in the industrialized world directly affect the lives of the poor in the developing world.

Undoubtedly, there are extensive social problems in our country, but compared to life in a slum, most Americans don't know what problems are — most Americans are, again by global standards, wealthy.

Put simply, American children don't die of diarrhea.

I'm not asserting that Americans should change their lifestyles (although I do believe bottled water is completely irrational), but I am encouraging awareness of the global situation.

Like it or not, our lives and our decisions are connected to poverty in other countries. Be aware of your decisions. Maybe next time you'll bring a Nalgene to school instead of buying imported water.

Columnist Brooke McKean: brookemckean@thedaily.washington.edu