WaterPLUS Social Venture
WaterPLUS is a social venture aimed at developing innovative point-of-use water purification products for the developing world using ultraviolet LEDs.
WaterPLUS Executive Summary
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UNC's CEI Reports on WaterPLUS 
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Kari Leech presents WaterPLUS at GSEC
WaterPLUS at UW's GSEC 
Waterborne pathogens are among the leading causes of disease worldwide, resulting in four billion clinical episodes of diarrhea and three million deaths per year, of which 88% (3.5 billion cases and 2.6 million deaths) are due to unsafe drinking water. Water-borne diseases represent 20% of the total mortality in children under five in developing countries, and an estimated 94% of this burden is preventable (WHO, 2004).
Not only do waterborne diseases pose an enormous development burden on countries and communities across the globe, but we can inexpensively prevent it. The provision of safe water through home-based water treatment has been labeled as one of the “10 cheap ways to save the world” (Johns, 2005). Finally, since we need to reach individual homes in dynamic geographic and demographic populations, social entrepreneurship using market mechanisms is uniquely suited to achieve maximum scale.
- 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.
- Average household size in developing countries: 5, i.e. 220 million households.
- The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals specifies an aim to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015.
- Aid programs have recently begun mobilizing resources to address water issues; for example, the United States Agency for International Development plans to leverage $1.6 billion in partnership with private industry over the next few years.
Developed countries approach drinking water purification through centralized treatment plants; however, the infrastructure to provide clean piped water is not available in most developing communities due to prohibitive capital investments and long-term maintenance costs and planning. In many developing communities, development is largely unplanned and constantly changing, which makes implementing any centralized technology difficult. Additionally, contamination of water frequently occurs at the household level due to unsanitary conditions and unsafe water storage practices. Thus, point-of-use (POU) devices, which require the least capital and maintenance and can address the health burden due to contaminated water used for drinking, cooking, and basic hygiene, are ideal for developing communities.
POU devices can be applied through either active or passive technologies. For actively operated technology, more health education and behavioral change is necessary for an individual to successfully operate and value that technology to achieve the maximum health benefit. Therefore, technologies that must be supported by education and need active operation are difficult to scale or reflect low-utilization in follow-up studies. There is a great need for passively operated and affordable point-of-use disinfection technology. Our vision at WaterPLUS is to create and deliver such an effective and appropriate product worldwide to families lacking access to safe water.
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation can be an effective means of disinfecting microorganisms with the correct hydraulic, water quality, and UV dosing conditions. Disinfection occurs as UV radiation transfers electromagnetic energy from the source to the microorganism’s genetic material. The affected material can be either DNA or RNA and to a lesser extent proteins, enzymes, and even hormones (Berson, 2007). Once the UV radiation has infiltrated “the cell wall of an organism, it destroys the cell’s ability to reproduce” (US EPA, 1999).
Water purification by ultraviolet light is an optimal choice for the following reasons:
- It disfigures the DNA of microorganisms, disinfecting them, and is effective against viruses and parasites which are resistant to other disinfection technologies. It needs seconds instead of minutes to work.
- It creates no byproducts in the water, thus avoiding the production of potential human carcinogens and disagreeable tastes in water that results through chemical purification.
- It only requires electricity to operate and avoids problems of chemical purification approaches which demand a local inventory and delivery system for consumables.
Previous implementations of UV purification have utilized low or medium pressure UV lamps. These lamps consist of mercury vapor-filled quartz enveloped by metal electrodes. These lamps emit light at a wavelength 253.7nm, well within the range of the germicidal UV-C band. Wavelengths between 253 nm and approximately 278 nm are suitable for germicidal UV (Sandia). Traditional UV lamps have a lifetime of between 4,000 and 10,000 hours (about 1 year of use), cost between $12 and $60 depending on wattage and type, require on the order of tens of watts of power to operate, and pose environmental and human health risks when improperly disposed due to the mercury vapor which they contain.
Ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (LEDs), in contrast, have a projected lifetime of up to 100,000 hours (about 10 years of use), require under a watt of power to operate, and pose no human health risks in disposal. Compared to UV lamps, they are also significantly more reliable, extremely robust, feature faster response times, and require no warm-up period for optimal performance.
WaterPLUS is a triple bottom line company, and our social return is paramount to the company’s success. Because our vision is to deliver an effective and appropriate disinfection technology to families lacking access to safe drinking water, our primary social return is the subsequent health and economic benefits to those families. Overall, improvements in drinking-water quality through point of use water treatment can lead to an average reduction of diarrhea episodes by 39% (Fewtrell, 2005). This reduction will vary according to the technology and region, and WaterPLUS will examine its own health impact through our field studies. The economic benefits of safe-drinking water are already well known.
"Globally, WHO has estimated that productivity gains from diarrheal disease reductions if the MDG drinking water and sanitation target is reached will exceed US$700 million a year. The income earned by those saved from premature death attributable to diarrheal disease, discounted to account for long-term earnings, adds another US$ 3.6 billion a year. There are gains too for health-care services in treating fewer patients, and for the patients themselves in direct costs of medication and transport. These gains add US$ 7.3 billion a year to the benefit side of the equation, and mean that the overall reduction in diarrheal disease episodes (10% of all cases) in meeting the MDG target would bring about yields economic benefits close to US$12 billion a year" (WHO and UNICEF, Water for life: making it happen, 2005).
WaterPLUS will measure our primary returns indirectly by tracking the total number of disinfection units sold in addition to the substantial health and economic benefits accrued by families with access to WaterPLUS technology. For every 100 households using WaterPLUS over 5 years: 2.5 lives are saved, 3200 episodes of diarrhea are prevented, and $33,600 in economic activity is recovered. The economic return, therefore, (depending on the product price $35-$50) is 7 - 10 times the original investment over 5 years (see Appendix B for our calculations of SROI). Over 6 years with 240,000 units sold WaterPLUS will:
- Save 5,949 lives
- Prevent 7,615,800 diarrheal episodes
- Recover $79,965,903 in economic activity
Several secondary returns are also realized. First, the manufacture and sales of WaterPLUS technology strengthens the local and regional economies by adding jobs and trade. Second, the long lifetime of our product and its mercury-free nature, compared to traditional UV lamps, translates to an improved environmental footprint by minimizing waste and the use of toxic chemicals.
Spatial primacy and transportation infrastructure will facilitate a faster and cheaper means of product distribution and marketing. Higher population densities enable more households to be reached than what would be possible using the same resources in rural areas. These important advantages of urban areas will help us create a brand presence and allow us to establish a base of operations and later extend into the surrounding rural areas.
The UN reports that sub-Saharan Africa faces the greatest challenge in meeting the Millennium Development Goals for drinking water and sanitation. Amongst all regions of the developing world, it has the lowest percentage of both urban and rural dwellers having access to improved water sources and sanitation. For this reason, we have chosen Kampala, Uganda, a sprawling urban center in sub-Saharan Africa for one of the pilot sites. Dhaka, Bangladesh was chosen because it too has a large urban population in need of clean water and because Bangladesh hosts a dense rural population, which will serve as a good initial testing bed for marketing the device to rural populations in future years. Water quality characteristics vary greatly in these two regions, allowing for WaterPLUS to rigorously test the technology and understand broader applicability. Additionally, these two markets feature stark differences in culture, customs, and education. The knowledge gained will enable us to create either a more universally acceptable product or better targeted products for key markets.
With the experience gained through the urban market, the next phase of the product roll-out is to expand into the rural areas. Despite the high population densities of urban areas, in many developing countries the majority of the households reside in rural areas. The rural market lags behind the urban market in both access to improved water sources and proper sanitation. The difficulty in easily obtaining water leads to a reliance on using stored water in households, which as described above can be contaminated.
WaterPLUS is currently competing in several business plan competitions to obtain feedback and advice in refining the business plan. We are obtaining funds and planning a technical evaluation and initial prototype development during summer 2008. We hope to begin initial field trials in early 2009. Feedback from the trials will be used to optimize the product, and we hope to launch the product in our initial markets late 2009 or early 2010.
Water for Life: Making it Happen by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
US EPA Wastewater Technology Fact Sheet: Ultraviolet Disinfection [pdf]
Managing water in the home by the World Health Organization
Final LDRD Report: Ultraviolet Water Purification Systems for Rural Environments and Mobile Applications prepared by Sandia National Laboratories.
Addressing the urban water challenge in Kampala, Uganda by the United Nations Human Settlements Program.
Safe Water System by the Centers for Disease Control
Use of UV Light for Disinfection of Water by Berson UV.