http://www.washdiplomat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8935&Itemid=514
by Anna
Gawel
Coca-Cola is
taking its mission to quench the world’s thirst to a whole new level, supporting
technology that could turn raw sewage into clean drinking
water.
The world’s
largest beverage company is teaming up with DEKA Research and Development and
its president, Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter, to bring Kamen’s
“Slingshot” water purification system to developing communities that lack access
to potable water.
The partnership
is part of Coca-Cola’s larger sustainability push, which includes a goal to
replenish 100 percent of the water used in its beverages and their production by
2020.
An intriguing
partnership of a different kind brought the story of Slingshot to the diplomatic
community in Washington, D.C.
Turkish
Ambassador Namik Tan opened up his stately residence for a presentation on the
project, co-hosted by Monaco’s ambassador, Gilles Noghès. Monaco supports
various water initiatives through the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation,
which aims to protect the environment and encourage sustainable
development.
In a testament
to the power of personal connections, Tan learned about Slingshot from Noghès’s
wife Ellen, who’s active in supporting breast cancer awareness and other causes
(also see “Monaco’s Ellen Noghès Forms Cancer
Support Group for Diplomatic Spouses” in the November 2012 issue of
The Washington Diplomat).
“When I first
heard about this great invention called Slingshot from my friend Ellen, I
couldn’t believe it was possible to turn dirty water into clean drinking water
and I had to see it for myself,” Tan told guests at the Dec. 5 reception. “So I
invited my dear friend Muhtar to participate by hosting this
event.”
Muhtar would be
Muhtar Kent, the Turkish-American chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., who
told the group through a video message that he believed Slingshot would be
“transformational in improving the health and quality of life of people around
the world.”
“Water is
becoming a scarce, valuable commodity. Today, more than 1 billion people lack
access to safe drinking water,” Kent said. “Water is the lifeblood of our
business and our commitment is to ensure we’re doing our part to replenish the
water we use and give it back to communities around the
world.”
To that end,
Beatriz Perez, Coca-Cola’s first-ever chief sustainability officer and a 16-year
veteran of the company, was on hand to explain how the iconic brand was working
to promote “water, women and well being.”
For instance,
one initiative, called 5by20, seeks to empower 5 million women entrepreneurs by
2020, joining forces with UN Women and numerous government and private sector
partners on three continents. Since 2005, Coca-Cola has also conducted nearly
400 community water projects in more than 90 countries, working hand in hand
with partners such as the World Wildlife Fund, USAID and
CARE.
Likewise, Slingshot is a multi-pronged collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank Group, Africare and, of course, Kamen’s research company.
Though the match between Kamen’s water purification system and the beverage giant seems like a natural fit, it took years for the pieces to come together. “I think I brought it to Coke after I exhausted every other possibility,” Kamen joked.
In fact, the
prolific American inventor — who, in addition to the Segway scooter, is the
brainchild behind the insulin pump and portable dialysis machine — didn’t even
set out to create a water purifying system.
His original intention a decade ago was to create a kidney dialysis machine that could sit at the home bedside of patients with renal failure to improve their quality of life. Such machines though need highly sterilized, medical-grade water every day to operate.
So Kamen set
about constructing a machine that could turn tap water into medical-grade water
— and soon realized that his innovation had much broader
applications.
“Besides helping
a few thousand people have a better quality of life, it could help a few billion
people dying of [waterborne] diseases,” Kamen said.
But he still faced the problem of how to deliver this technology to the remote, rural parts of the world that needed it the most.
Kamen explained
that many of his traditional corporate partners operated in countries that could
afford sophisticated medical products — where safe drinking water was not an
issue.
He finally, and
fortuitously, stumbled onto Coca-Cola, which was eager to raise its
environmental profile and, more importantly, had a presence in more than 200
nations around the world.
Kamen explained
that Slingshot derives its name from the simple but effective weapon that David
used to defeat Goliath. “It’s a little machine you can put anywhere and it can
turn any kind of water into clean, safe drinking water,” he
said.
Slingshot boils
and evaporates any dirty water source — ocean water, river water, raw sewage,
even arsenic-tainted water — and, through vapor-compression distillation, allows
the pure water to condense and then be collected.
According to a
Coca-Cola press release, one machine can purify up to 300,000 liters of water a
year — enough daily drinking water for roughly 300 people — producing 10 gallons
of clean water an hour while consuming less than one kilowatt of electricity,
less than the amount of power needed for a handheld
hairdryer.
Technology to
convert unusable water into safe water has been the gold standard in addressing
the looming water scarcity crisis. Kamen says his portable, low-energy machine —
one of many variants on the market — is not a panacea. It is targeted for people
with limited access to water and not intended to take the place of major water
plants or other infrastructure. And although it only requires a small amount of
energy to run, it still requires electricity, whether plugged into a local grid
or powered by some other source — something not all communities
have.
Kamen is also
working with the communities to ensure that locals — not foreigners — are able
to operate the machines. And he’s been working with Coca-Cola to scale up the
technology while lowering its costs.
“For years
we looked for a partner who could help us get the Slingshot machine into
production, scale it up, bring down the cost curve, and deliver and operate the
units in the places where the need is greatest,” Kamen said. “Now we have that
partner with Coca-Cola, which brings unparalleled knowledge of working,
operating and partnering in the most remote places of the
world.”
In 2011, the
company held a successful field trial of Slingshot at five schools outside
Accra, Ghana, generating 140,000 liters of clean drinking water for 1,500 school
children over a six-month span.
In 2013, the
plan is to deliver millions of liters of clean drinking water to schools, health
clinics and community centers in rural regions of Africa and Latin America —
with the ultimate goal of adding more than half a billion liters of clean
drinking water to the global water supply each year.
Though Slingshot
is still in the early stages of mass distribution, hopes are high that the
little machine can put a dent in a huge crisis.
Even though more
than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, only 1 percent of it
is ready to drink, according to the World Health Organization, which estimates
that more than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation and
hygiene-related causes.
In fact, almost
one fifth of the world’s population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas
where water is physically scarce. One quarter of the global population also live
in developing countries that face water shortages due to a lack of
infrastructure to fetch water from rivers and aquifers, according to
WHO.
The problem
will only get worse with the unpredictable weather patterns spawned by climate
change. The State Department predicts that by 2025, nearly two-thirds of the
world’s population will be living under water-stressed conditions, including
roughly 2 billion people who will face absolute water
scarcity.
Water scarcity touches on everything from international relations — conflicts typically erupt over access to resources — to women’s rights, because it’s often women and girls who spend hours each day collecting water, foregoing other economic and education opportunities.
Tackling water scarcity will require imagination and collective action, according to Coca-Cola’s chief. “Our sustainability initiatives have reinforced over and over again our belief in the power of collaboration,” Kent said. “Global challenges like water scarcity are bigger than any one company or organization and require us to think and partner beyond our own circles. Only through collective action and innovation will we achieve results where it’s most important.”
About the Author
Anna Gawel is
the managing editor for The Washington Diplomat and a contributing writer for
the Diplomatic Pouch.
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