A billion people around the world don’t have access to safe drinking water, and only 2% of the world’s water is safe to drink.

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway scooter, loves problems like this. He created a water purification system called the Slingshot that takes water from just about anywhere, including oceans and sewage, and purifies 300,000 liters of it a year using less power than a hair dryer.

But cleaning the water is only half the challenge. Dean still had to get the water to the people who needed it.

There’s nobody with a distribution network like Coca-Cola’s. You can buy a Coke in every country in the world except for Cuba and North Korea. So Dean and Coca-Cola came together to bring clean water to the places people needed it most.

By 2020, The Coca-Cola Company wants to replenish 100% of the water it uses in its beverages, and it’s recruiting whoever it can to help achieve that goal. In 2012, they partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank Group to bring water to Latin America and AFRICARE to do the same in Africa. Last year, they rolled out EKOCENTER, a mega Slingshot purification center run by local entrepreneurs, and by next year, they expect to have more than 1,500 installed across the developing world.

Coca-Cola’s total projected impact? Half a billion liters a year of safe drinking water for communities in need.

Today, on World Water Day, let’s #ToastToWater and to the public-private partnerships that are helping solve the world’s problems.

[blockquote]Learn more about The Coca-Cola Company’s water stewardship program.[/blockquote]