Innovative Drinking Water Solution for the Developing World

The recent Opportunity Green Conference 2011 in Los Angeles featured an extraordinary presentation by Gaylon White, Director at the Eastman Chemical Company. The company has come up with a very promising social innovation to address the challenge of clean drinking water in the developing world. The company's unique water treatment technology is called HydroPack.

The HydroPack is essentially a 12 ounce plastic bag that can be thrown into practically any contaminated water source; it then produces a nutrient and electrolyte rich drink from it within eight to twelve hours. The drink is free of bacteria, viruses and even heavy metal. The membrane for this HydroPack is produced by Portland-based Hydration Technology Innovations (HTI), which makes use of Eastman's cellulose triacetate. The HydroPack pulls and filters the dirty water by the process of forward osmosis.

The technology sounds quite simple, but a lot of ground work has gone into the development of this technology, especially in designing the delivery system and instructions to ensure that the product gets understood and accepted by different cultures. The most promising application of the HydroPack is in the first phase of disaster relief. When a flood or another natural disaster occurs, the majority of deaths do not occur as a direct result of the disaster itself. They occur after the disaster when survivors fail to get access to clean drinking water and fall prey to water-borne diseases.

Hauling clean, bottled water to disaster-hit areas is usually very difficult because transportation cannot reach the worst-hit regions. A single helicopter carrying HydroPack can deliver the same amount of clean water as 15 helicopters carry bottled water. Considering that 15 times more water could have been provided during the Haiti earthquake relief efforts if HydroPack technology had been available, one can estimate the huge potential social impact of this technology.

Photo Credit: Perena