waterPLUS: Saving Lives Through Water Purification

We continue our coverage of social entrepreneurship with waterPLUS, founded last fall by a slew of social entrepreneurs from across the country, which aims to create a low cost point-of-use water purification product using light emitted in the germicidal ultraviolet range to eliminate waterborne pathogens that result in 3 million deaths per year. Put simply, waterPLUS will be designing and producing unique water purification systems that will save lives. The incredibly talented team, comprised of Naman Shah (MD/PhD candidate, UNC Chapel Hill), Joel Thomas (Executive Director of Nourish International), Kari Leech (UNC Chapel Hill), Will Patrick (Duke), Saket Vora (M.S. Stanford) and Win Bassett (UNC Chapel Hill - Law), advanced to the final round in the social track of the Carolina Challenge. waterPLUS is currently in the design and development phase, hoping to go to market in approximately one and a half years. Saket explained to me that other point-of-use purification methods that involve chemicals pose a series of problems including time lag, poor water taste, and the need for a local inventory for supplies. In addition, he noted that boiling water consumes too much energy and solar heating takes too much time. The waterPLUS vision is a product that can be used with a variety of power sources, consumes less power overall, acts in seconds instead of minutes, is long lasting and robust, and is affordable to those who need it most (technologies that use ultraviolet light are expensive). The market for waterPLUS products is promising, which could mean that while doing the world good the company could profit tremendously. 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and the United Nation's Millenium Development Goals specifies an aim to reduce that number by half by 2015, giving $1.6 billion to the private sector to develop solutions. The market is clearly there, but as Saket points out, waterPLUS's biggest obstacle will be getting to it. The technology they plan on leveraging to develop the purification systems is new and uncommercialized; therefore, it comes at a high price. The market for the technology will have to mature before waterPLUS is viable. For the time being, the team's goal is to get everything else sorted out (prototypes, market evaluation, certification, trials, etc.) so that when the time is right they are ready.