Cheap, clean drinking water

The 33-member Philippine Cooperative Center has found a money maker. It is lending its member-cooperatives the money to buy the drinking water system distributed by Multi Pure Phils. Corp.

Each drinking water system costs about $230, plus the annual cost of P2,900 to replace the filter. The cooperative can sell the clean water at 22 centavos a bottle compared to the P8 charged by bottled water companies.

From the sale of water, the member-cooperative can pay back the loan. Whatever else is earned would be divided among coop members at the end of the year.

"We agreed to be a business partner because clean water is part of our advocacy," said PCC president Enrique Villanueva.

"The drinking water business is still in its infancy stage. Although there is growing awareness of the need to have safe drinking water, not everybody, especially in the provinces and in less affluent areas, can afford to buy bottled drinking water," said Multi Pure president Salvador Fabregas.

Multi Pure’s drinking water system was developed by Alvin and Allen Rice. Sometime in the 1970s, they came up with the technology to manufacture solid carbon filters which eliminates different kinds of contaminants found in water.

Today, Multi Pure is the world’s largest manufacturer of compressed solid carbon block filters.

World Standards

A major come on of the Multi Pure drinking water system is its certification from the National Sanitation Foundation, a third party testing and certification agency for water treatment services. Multi Pure has passed the NSF Standard 53 for health effects and the NSF Standard 42 for aesthetic effects.

Based on World Health Organization studies, about 30% of deaths in Asia are attributed to unsafe water. This figure is expected to increase due to the continued pollution of the water by industry and power plants using fossil fuels like coal and oil as well as by the rampant use of harmful insecticides and fungicides in farmlands.