Clean Water at No Cost? Just Add Carbon Credits

Full Article:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clean-water-at-no-cost-just-add-carbon-credits/

Snippet:

In America, I turn on the faucet and out pours water. In much of the world, no such luck. Nearly a billion people don’t have drinkable water...

Now there’s a new way to save water projects from an early death: make clean water a for-profit business, charging people an unusual price: zero.

Where will the profits come from? Polluters... What will make this work are the global carbon credit markets... By giving people an alternative to boiling water in order to purify it, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in countries where trees are scarce.

If you are a hiker or camper, you may have heard about Vestergaard Frandsen’s LifeStraw. It’s a hollow stick equipped with a series of filtering membranes. You put the end of the stick in a river or puddle ─ or a toilet, for that matter ─ and suck on it. By the time the water hits your lips, it is clean and safe ─ its filters are fine enough to trap virtually all bacteria, viruses and parasites.

Vestergaard Frandsen will distribute the LifeStraw Family for free. It is helping to sponsor a traveling campaign through the western part of Kenya set for April, 2011, that will reach 4 million families.

The company is on the way to getting approval from one of the carbon credit markets for the LifeStraw Family, and expects to win it in February. Approval will provide a way for Vestergaard Frandsen to recoup its $24 million initial investment and to turn the product into a sustainable business ─ at no cost to users. It will earn credits for preventing greenhouse gas emissions, credits that polluters will then buy. The company will open free repair shops across western Kenya. Every three years, at the end of the units’ lifespan, it will replace them at no charge.