Improving sustainable access to safe drinking water.

ACT Global brings together parties to share their knowledge, creativity and passion in service of our main goal: to make our world more sustainable. We are beginning to understand what the consequences of our lifestyles are. We ‘hear’ the earth. Luckily there are visionaries. ACT Global wants to find these people and inspire them to act, challenge them to unite, facilitate them to move. ACT Global is about finding solutions and applying them.

Vestergaard Frandsen’s Life Straw became a symbol for the search for A Convenient Truth. The Life Straw is a synthetic straw with a water filter, which can be worn around the neck with a cord. When someone drinks water using the Life Straw, it eliminates microorganisms that cause diarrhea, typhoid and cholera. The Life Straw produces water quality comparable to that of tap water in most Western countries. An adult can drink clean water for a year using the Life Straw. This simple invention, costing only 2 dollars apiece, could relief water stress of millions in a safe way. Yet very few people are aware that the Life Straw exists. ACT Global wants to change this.

Together with partners Vestergaard Frandsen, Wetsus, SNS REAAL Water Fund and Micro Water Facility we want to set up a launching project to introduce Life Straw and help improve sustainable access to safe drinking water by introducing the latest safe water inventions through microfinance. The project will become a role model project and will be mediatized as part of ACT Global’s mission to UNITE & MOVE.

Until now only a limited number of microfinance institutions have been involved in the water sector. Investing in clean and safe drinking water does not stand high on their priority list. Reasons for this are the lack of knowledge and insight in this market and shortage of comparison material. Moreover, an investment in clean water (although it has high cost savings capacity) is not considered to be a profitable activity. To ensure adequate clean and safe drinking water facilities is often left to the responsibility of governments. There are major arguments for entrepreneurs to enter this market though. Today, more than one billion people of the world’s population are without access to safe drinking water. Safe water inventions have a vast potential to transform the lives of millions of people. Water filtration tools not only provide safe drinking water but also have a positive health impact on the most vulnerable populations. This means that in these regions people, even though poor, are willing to invest in better access to such products.

Partners: Vestergaard-Frandsen, Wetsus, MicroWaterFacility, SNS Waterfonds, Aidenvironment