Water for All?

After solidifying transportation plans to India, I redirected my focus towards living more sustainably while in-country.  Something I am looking forward to the most is indulging in some delicious, authentic Indian cuisine.  But of concern for a westerner living and traveling in India are the sanitary conditions used in food preparation, especially as they pertain to clean water.  And furthering that concern, finding safe drinking water to pair with all that food sampling is not something to be ignored.  Of course, bottled water is available for purchase, but even if I was willing to take the risk that the bottled water was, in fact, purified and not simply tap water in a re-sealed and resold bottle, drinking bottled water for two months hardly seems like the best, most sustainable solution to this problem.  But what other options might there be?

The Problem

Though households in India with a source of drinking water have increased by almost 30% (37 million households) since 2001, about 18% still don’t have access to any source of drinking water in or near their homes.  Even for those with access, the water is not necessarily fit to drink, and more than 27 million households drink untreated water.  Because of this, the World Bank has estimated that “around 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe drinking water.”  (Source: WSJ)

Organizations like Water.org and Drinking Water for India are doing their part to help bring clean, safe drinking water to those in need, but the problem is clearly still widely spread.  And even though I will be living in Hyderabad for the majority of my trip - a metropolitan area with ready access to tap water - the water available will not be safe for me to drink.  Putting the much larger problem of water accessibility for all aside momentarily, I would be extremely susceptible to waterborne diseases and other illnesses from ingesting untreated tap water.  So I dove right into researching point-of-use water treatment options that might provide both a safe option for purifying tap water and an alternative to leaving behind a wake of slowly-degrading, landfill-polluting plastic bottles.

The Options

In A Survey of Point of Use Household Water Treatment Options for Rural South India, Kendralyn Jeffreys explored six different water treatment options:  chlorine disinfectant with safe water storage, chlorine-flocculant sachets, biosand filters, ceramic filters, solar water disinfection (SODIS), and boiling.  All have benefits and drawbacks, but when effectiveness, ease of use, and cost are taken into consideration, two stand out.

Proctor & Gamble has developed PUR chlorine-flocculant sachets which contain both a powder that coagulates heavy metals, organic material, and microorganisms, reducing the turbidity of the water, and a powdered chlorine disinfectant.  One PUR sachet treats 10 liters of water and costs less than $.01 per liter.  The packet is simply emptied into the untreated water; then, when the solid particles separate and settle, the solution can be poured into another container through a thin cloth material that collects the clumped substance while the chlorine disinfects the remaining water, making it safe to drink.

Effect of PUR on Water 

Boiling is another simple and reliable method of treating contaminated tap water.  All that is required is a pot and a heat source.  The water should be brought to a “rolling boil”, effectively killing most pathogens and making the water safe to drink.  Once it has been treated, the water can be stored in containers and chilled to a more desirable drinking temperature.  Because no measuring is involved, this method may be preferable,  especially at the end of my trip when I'll be doing most of my traveling and will not have access to consistent storage options for treated water.

Final Thoughts on Clean Water

Though it will take some pre-planning and preparation on a regular basis, avoiding the use of plastic bottled water should not be extremely difficult and will prove to be much more environmentally beneficial during my two-month stay in India.  All of this research, however, has brought to light the much more dire situation faced by citizens of developing nations the world over.  Something we take for granted and waste on a daily basis in the U.S. is a precious resource for which people walk miles each day, transporting contaminated containers of unsafe water that is needed in whatever form it is available for survival.  If simply having access to the knowledge that this resource is not infinite is not enough to wake us up to our wasteful ways, maybe a look at a life without clean, readily available water will help drive the point home.

Incorporating the Environment

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody – and everybody eventually destroys it.

A recurring and intriguing theme in this week’s readings was the idea of economic demand management and questioning what we define as ‘growth’.  Paul Hawken’s description in “Natural Capitalism” says it well:

Currently, economists count most industrial, environmental, and social waste as GDP, right along with bananas, cars, and Barbie dolls.  Growth includes all expenditures, regardless of whether society benefits or loses.  This includes the cost of emergency room services, prisons, toxic cleanups, homeless shelters, lawsuits, cancer treatments, divorces, and every piece of litter along the side of every highway.

Instead of counting decay as economic growth, we need to subtract decline from revenue to see if we are getting ahead or falling behind.  Unfortunately, where economic growth is concerned, the government uses a calculator with no minus sign.

Involved in a possible paradigm shift, though, are many issues.  The government and big business are increasingly becoming involved in social and environmental policy.  Some businesses in particular are taking the lead, and there’s a new way of distinguishing them from the crowd.  But is this self-identification doing more harm than good?

Benefit Corporations

In April of 2010, Maryland became the first state to pass Benefit Corporation legislation.  Since then, 11 other states have followed suit (Indiana is not currently one of them).  Benefit Corporations are “a class of corporation required by law to create general benefit for society as well as for shareholders.”  They 1) have a corporate purpose to create a material positive impact on society and the environment, 2) redefine fiduciary duty to require consideration of non-financial interests when making decisions, and 3) report on overall social and environmental performance using recognized third party standards.  This legislation is an attempt to legally codify firms that have a social mission as part of their core reason for existence, and many feel the new framework brings some legitimacy to the table.  In an article in The Economist, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, talks about the implications he sees in the new legislation.  Benefit Corporations are thought to exist in the space between for-profit and non-profit entities and provide a way for companies to avoid the “pressure to abandon social goals in favor of increasing profits” as well as the restricted “ability to raise capital when they need to grow,” leaving them free to pursue their goals efficiently.  A PBS report looks at the implications of this legislation:

At the Net Impact Conference in Baltimore, Maryland a few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit in on two interesting panels that involved this topic.  One specifically discussed Benefit Corporations and Certified B Corporations, which are related but different from one another.  While Benefit Corporation is a legal status administered by the state, B-Corp Certification is a brand certification administered by the non-profit B Lab as "having met a high standard of overall social and environmental performance" and is available in all states and countries worldwide.  (Check out the link above or read this article for more info on B-Corps.)  The panelists included Andrew Kassoy, Co-Founder of B Lab; Gary Skulnik, President and Co-Founder of Clean Currents; and David Griswold, Founder and President of Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers.  While the discussion was incredibly informative about what exactly Benefit Corporations and Certified B-Corps are, how they differ from one another, how businesses go about obtaining these titles, and what benefits they're gaining from them, I couldn't help but wonder if there was more to the story.

As luck would have it, the topic came up again in a later panel that same day.  Lynn Stout, a professor at Cornell Law School, was asked for her thoughts on Benefit Corporations.  And while I think we can all attest to the importance of a company’s stated social and/or environmental mission, Lynn’s response characterized the B-Corp versus C-Corp mentality as “perpetuating the shareholder value myth” (which also happens to be the title of her book).  Essentially, she questioned the need for a separate legal status when the greater public good should be a concern of all corporations.  (For more on the movement away from a sole focus on shareholder value, read this article from The New York Times.)  It seems Judith Samuelson, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, agrees.  In a Huffington Post blog, she argues that “all businesses should have a public purpose, not just ‘B-Corps’”.  And while I can understand the desire for a legitimate title that helps to ensure that a company is meeting the goals of a triple bottom line, the argument against keeping social and environmental issues in a niche setting is not one that should be taken lightly.

So for me, the debate continues.  I can fully understand wanting to avoid the tragedy of the commons by legally binding a business to creating positive social and environmental impact, especially when we consider changing management philosophies.  But shouldn’t we be requiring this of them all?