Clean Water
Clean Water is a challenge for millions of poor rural Guatemalan families and many more millions of poor families around the world. These families don’t have access to clean water, they need to boil water in order to purify it, but they can’t always boil water. When these families do boil the water the smoke of the bonfire they light can hurt them, while the fire itself releases CO2 and and cost these poor families 10 precious dollars per month.
Purifying Water With Clay
Purifying water can be actually done with very basic materials. The Same clay ancient civilisations used to create their plates and cups when treated smartly can use as a filter to remove dirt. Together with two other common materials: sawdust that removes smells and bad tastes, and colloidal silver that kills bacteria one gets a very effective filter. In 1981 Mr. Fernando Mazariegos, a Guatemalan engineer, developed a clever way to use clay, pinewood, and colloidal silver in order to produce a super effective water filter, the Ceramic Pot Filter. It is simple to use and can be produced by locals, using local material, thus creating jobs in poor areas, providing clean water to poor families, and protecting the environment by eliminating the need to use bonfire to boil water.
How Does It Work?
A clay Ecofiltro filter looks like a large clay planter. You put the filter into a bigger container, pure water into the filter and clean water drip into the larger container in a rate of one litter per 2 hours. Each container has a little faucet at the bottom, and that’s it. Easy. Cheap. Environmental.
Ecofiltro
Good ideas are just good ideas. It takes a bold entrepreneur to make them happen, Philip Wilson is such an entrepreneur. I’m meeting Mr. Wilson at his third Ecofiltro Factory at the outskirts of the beautiful colonial Antigua. It’s a state of the art factory. Looking like a combination of a museum, a workshop, and a warehouse, the factory may look vey nice, but it is also very efficient, producing almost 100,000 filters a year. Improving the lives of 100,000 poor families a year.
Social Business
Mr. Wilson is a new type of entrepreneur. He wants to make the world a better place, but he knows that great businesses have better chances to make an impact. Social business entrepreneurs are not social entrepreneurs and not your average exit seekers, they are a new type.
Young, ambitious, with contagious enthusiasm, Mr. Wilson is determined to provide 1M filters to 1M poor Guatemalan families by 2020 while building a multi million dollar business. Mr. Wilson has already won numerous prizes, but one visit at his new Ecofiltro factory is enough to convince even the most sceptics that he is very serious about his plans.
Manufacturing The Filters
The clay is being dug at local pots, dusted at the factory and then mixed with pinewood sawdust. The mixture is being watered and then pressed to form a new filter. The clay filters are then finished by a qualified artisan and then burnt for exactly 6 minutes. The next stage is quality control to make sure that it takes exactly 2 hours for one litter of water to filter through, not more (too slow production of water which is not practical for families to use) and not less (If the water is filtering too quickly, it means that the filter holes are too large and that dirt can go through). Only 65% of the filters pass the quality test as the process itself requires some skill and knowhow. The rest of the filters are being sold as planters while those filters who pass the quality test are being painted with colloidal silver to become a finished good. A new filter costs $25 together with the simplest container and can serve a family to purify its water for two years.
A demonstration transparent container, with the clay filter inside:
And a filter that didn’t pass quality control…
The Business Of The Social Business
Ecofiltro has two types of filters: Rural Filters and Urban Filters. They sell the Rural Filters to poor families on a subscription base for $2 a month and they sell the Urban Filters for anything between $60 and $150 depending on how pretty is the container. Both Rural and Urban filters do the same thing, purifying water. The Rural ones save lives and are being sold on a break-even price while the Urban filters are being sold for a profit which subsidises the Rural filters. But the really nice thing about the Urban filters is that even an urban family can save money by using Ecofiltro instead of buying bottled water. Social Business Ventures seems like the 21st century new way of making an impact.
Distributing The Filters
Ecofiltro has two very distinctive markets: The Rural Market and The Urban Market.
Rural Market:
In order to market the Rural Filters to the poorest communities, Ecofilitro has built a team of representatives who travel to the remotest villages in Gutemala and recruict local “Water Boards”. A Water Board is a group of 3 locals, usually females who are trained to educate locals about the program and encourage them to sign for the initial subsidised $2.5 payment and the $2 per month subscription for a filter. Surprisingly enough, some locals, don’t even know that they have water problem and think that regular stomach ache and high child mortality rates are normal. The families will be then trained to use the Ecofiltro hygienically, as if the filter is fractured or being touched with dirty hands its effectiveness could be damaged significantly.
Families who sign for the program will pay an initial fee of $2.5 for the first filter and a container and then will pay $2 monthly to be entitled for a new filter after two years. Just for comparison, local families spend every month about $10 on fire woods and another $8 on medicine for contaminated water and smoke related diseases. Since poor families pay only $2.5 for the first filter and container, Ecofiltro has to finance the additional $22.5 to get to the $25 price of the filter and most basic container.For that end, Mr. Wilson established the Ecofiltro foundation, an NGO financed by donations, which pays the $22.5 additional sum needed to purchase the first filter and container. The Water Boards are a brilliant social invention that puts peer pressure on local families to participate, to pay the fees, and also helps Ecofiltro to collect the monthly subscription fees. If only 75% of families pay the monthly fee this social operation can break even. As mentioned, Ecofiltor’s goal is to reach 1M rural families by 2020 and to essentially solve the water problem in Guatemala.
Urban Market:
Urban Market filters are exactly the same filters like the Rural ones, but come with fancier containers. The filters are sold to businesses that are excited to take part in protecting the environment, while saving money on bottled water. The filters are also sold to households that like the idea and also like the clear water great taste. Finally a more expensive filters are being sold to fashionable wealthy Guatemalan that are happy to take part and purchase one of Ecofiltro’s collectable and uniquely designed containers that are being sold on a regular action around Guatemala. For Ecofiltro the Urban Market serves three goals: (a) it subsidises the entire operation, (b) it helps fund the Ecofiltro foundations as 5% of the proceedings of any Urban Filter sold are being donated to the Ecofiltro foundation, and (c) it is a great marketing channel that helps the Ecofiltro team to spread the idea, raise awareness, and raise donations.
Solving The World’s Water Problem
Mr. Wilson is dream is to solve the world’s water problem, he is working on standardising the manufacturing of Ceramic Pot Filtering, and he is also working on Improving the filters themselves, improving its go to market channels, and on spreading the technology to more countries around the world. All that while protecting the environment, selling carbon credit worth millions of dollars, and building a multi million dollar social business enterprise. Walking around Ecofiltro’s implacable factory and listening to Mr. Wilson passionate plans, solving the world’s water problems doesn’t sound such an unrealistic goal anymore.
For More Information
If you wish to know more, get involved, volunteer, or donate a new filter and container through the Ecofiltro foundation, visit Ecofiltro’s website at www.ecofiltro.com or contact Ilse Verhaert at iverhaert@ecofiltro.com
Eleven Thirty PM 