HWTS- Household Water Treatment and Storage

Although we have learned so much in the past couple of weeks I am going to try to summarise, in one blog, what we have leanred so far and the various water technologies we have came across.

Samaritans Purse (Biosand)

First we met with the 'Head of Biosand for the Asian department for Samaritans Purse'. He was very interesting and gave us a lot of useful and practical advice. He made it very clear that Biosand is a fantastic technology that is robust and reliable, however it can only be done properly if the organisation has large resources and lots of time and money. He stressed that it is very difficult to reach the masses with biosand without heavy subsidies and a very committed team. Bisoand Filters are metre tall sand filters that have a thing biological layer on the top. This layer helps remove bad bacteria and the sand helps remover visible sediment. This is a very effective method of water treatment for households.

He also pointed out that until recently they have not been too successful in the Poipet area as biosand is not portable and there is a high migration rate accross the border to Thailand, therefore a large number of biosand filters are abandoned. Samaritans purse try now to focus on communities that bring in their income from agriculture as they will be permanent members.

RDI - Resource Development International

This is an NGO that is dedicated to serving the people of Cambodia in dynamic ways. Their main focus is the manufacturing and distribution of CWP's - Ceramic Water Purifiers. These are basically clay pots that are porous enough to let water through but not enough to let contaminants through. We visited their factory that produces around 100 per day. We met with a fellow EWB member who had been working for RDI for 10 months.

He told us a lot of interesting things to do with CWP technology. He mentioned that he helps by advising people on how to correctly set up a CWP factory and how to start up a business producing and selling CWP's. He also confirmed what we knew, which was that many people come to cambodia, buy the filters and just give them to the villagers then just go home then a couple of months down the line the pots have broken and the community go back to drinking untreated surface water. Therefore for this type of technology it is vital that a clear distribution network is set up so the families can easily replace broken ones.

PATH - Programme for Appropriate Technolgy and Health

PATH is an international nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health. They carry out surveys and market research into the commercialisation of HWTS products for the private sector. They believe that in successfully commercialising these products, such as Ceramic Water Pots, they can reach a large number of poor Cambodian communities quickly.

This was a new concept to us as mostly when you talk about international development you think of projects going into communities and spending a few months with them and the eventually installing the technology then leaving. However if you can great a demand for the product, the members of the communities will travel to collect this product and will travel to buy spare parts.

PATH highlighted to us that there are two main commercialised filters in the market at the moment: Mineral Pots and CWP's. They mentioned that mineral pots hold 88% of the market whereas CWP's only hold 12%. However CWP's have the potential to be more effective at water treatment. This reason this happening is that CWP's are not as modern looking as mineral pots and so consumers tend to sway to mineral pots. They also said a large proportion of mineral pots distributed are cheap fakes.

This gave us the idea of possibly focussing our efforts on working towards the commercialising CWP's (working with RDIC) by writing up a feasibility study on the implementation of distribution networks for CWP's in the poipet area as these currently do not exist. From there we could possibly create a demand and in the long run set convince retailers to stock the product and possibly find and train a vendor for direct sales to the community. This vendor would be supplied by RDI in the short term and could possibly set up a small factory when a large enough demand has been generated in the area.

Rainwater Cambodia

We met with an NGO that works mainly in the private sector providing sustainable rainwater harvesting systems and pit latrines. They use the first flush system which effectively catches all the dirt off the roof after a dry period before it can go into storage. This was an interesting meeting that highlighted the difficulties of successfully installing rainwater systems. One problem is that many rural communities in Cambodia live in wooden huts with temporary thatched or corrugated iron roofs. Therefore from the offset rainwater harvesting is difficult as a large majority of the roof would need to be replaced with zinc sheets in order for it to pass WHO standards.

Trailblazer Foundation

Trailblazer provide training and appropriate technology and empower rural villagers to create self-sustaining programs. 

Their focus includes water projects, school construction, and community development in order to foster healthy families, sufficient food, and sustainable incomes. 

We have now spent a week with trailblazer where we worked on many aspects of their organisation.

Firstly we built (with the aid of the construction team) 3 biosand filters from scratch. This was a great experience as we were given the opportunity to take part in all stages of the production and ask questions throughout. We then got to go out to the communities with trailblazers to install them. It was interesting to see how trailblazers interacted with the community. They collect a small contribution from each family for the filter, which then gets put into the village fund. This can then be spent on improving community facilities. This also helps strengthen the newly formed grassroots teams.

We also helped construct wells in the communities. Trailblazer use a very simple, but very effective design to pump the water from the well. It was so simple that we watched them make the whole pump infront of us in less than 1 hour. See below for a picture of it.

So hopefully i have went into enough detail to keep you interested but not too much to make you bored! Next we plan to meet with 1001 Fontaines (they help communities set up small water treatment plants, from which they can sell clean water), Hydrologique (they help set up CWP factories and distribution networks) and Hagar (the largest distributor of Biosand Filters in Cambodia).

I will keep you updated once we have done that. When we have met these NGO's we will of hopefully formed a strong project structure with which we can implement when we are out here.

Jack