We're lucky to turn on the tap and have clean, drinkable water flow right out whenever we need it, but not everyone is so lucky. In much of the developing world, water is a scarce, precious resource. Women tend to carry the burden of water collection, traveling miles each day to carry water home for her family. And even then, that water is not always clean.
Procter & Gamble's non-profit arm recently developed sachets that transforms murky, dirty water into clean water suitable for drinking, cooking, and bathing. Here's how it works:
- Pour the mixture into 2.5 gallons (10 liters) of water.
- Wait for the residue to settle.
- Filter through cotton cloth.
That's it! The sachets cost around 10 cents each and each one filters enough water for five people. These sachet could change lives for people in the developing world who don't have access to clean drinking water and for victims of natural disaster victims. The company distributed their sachets in Haiti earlier this year after the devastating earthquake there demolished clean water access for many people.
Procter & Gamble teamed up with charitable organizations who work in drought-stricken regions like CARE to develop the sachet, which uses iron sulphate and a very small amount of chlorine to pull the dirt out of water and kill dangerous microbes. P&G aims to make and distribute 200 million of these sachets per year beginning in 2013, and they're already on the way to hitting their goal of 140 million sachets for this year.
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