When Jimmy Kemmel and Ben Affleck called out their friend Matt Damon to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that is taking the internet by storm, Damon was a little conflicted. The challenge calls for dumping a bucket filled with ice water on your head and making a donation to the ALS Association to help fund research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease.
The only problem is that Damon is the co-founder of Water.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing clean drinking water to millions of people around the globe who currently lack sanitized water. That, coupled with the fact that California is currently in a severe drought, made Damon feel a little guilty about wasting an entire bucket of clean water just to make an internet video.
So he did what any self-respecting philanthropist would do: He used toilet water instead.
"It posed kind of a problem for me, not only because there's a drought here in California," Damon says in the video, uploaded to Water.org's YouTube channel. "But because I co-founded Water.org, and we envision the day when everybody has access to a clean drink of water -- and there are about 800 million people in the world who don't -- and so dumping a clean bucket of water on my head seemed a little crazy."
Swapping out clean water for still relatively clean toilet water seemed like a perfectly good solution, and a way to make an important point. While gross, Damon points out that toilet water in the U.S. and in the western world is much cleaner than the water in many developing countries. The act actually falls perfectly in line with Damon's previous awareness work for Water.org, which involved him breaking up with his toilet and going on a bathroom "strike" until the rest of the world had clean water.
Staying true to the Ice Bucket Challenge, Damon called for fellow actor George Clooney, Bono and NFL Quarterback Tom Brady to answer his call and do an Ice Bucket Challenge of their own in the next 24 hours.
Regardless if Damon's nominations do accept the challenge, the ALS Association is rolling in donations thanks to the widespread awareness of the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign. According to TIME, the ALS Association between July 29 and Aug. 25 has raised more than $79.7 million for research in combating the fatal neurodegenerative disease, and the campaign is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. In the same time period last year the ALS Association raised roughly $2.5 million.
