100 WATER HEROES: AABID SURTI

Founder of the Drop Dead Foundation

Aabid Surti is the Founder of the one-man NGO, Drop Dead Foundation (DDF), which fixes leaking taps in residential houses in Mumbai, free of charge.

He read a newspaper article in 2007 that explained that a tap that dripped once every second would lead to the waste of over 1000 litres of water a month. When he became aware of the severity of the looming global water crisis, he was incentivised to found Drop Dead, which uses the tagline, “save every drop, or drop dead.” He hired a plumber, and together, they visit houses to replace the gasket on leaking faucets.

Before he added environmentalist to his list of achievements, Aabid was already a prolific National award-winning author of over 80 books, as well as a screenwriter, cartoonist and artist. Since starting his water-saving initiatives, he was been nominated for the CNN-IBN CJ ‘Be The Change’ Award in 2010, organised the DDF short film competition to raise awareness on water conservation and had his project featured on multiple national and international media platforms.

Aabid is one of our #100waterheroes for taking the unwavering commitment to making water-saving changes in his own community, one tap at a time.

Website: http://aabidsurti.in/#