A water shop in Pakistan supplied by Sukoon Water, a water treatment plant company whose founder Rehan Adamjee will be attending Singapore International Water Week. Image: Sukoon Water

By Feng Zengkun
Jun 13 2018 (Eco-Business)

Rehan Adamjee was just 23 years old when he founded social enterprise Sukoon Water in 2016 to supply safe drinking water to Pakistan’s urban slums. More than six in 10 people in the country do not have access to safe drinking water, and the problem is often worse in its dense urban slums where the mixing of sewage and water lines leads to a higher risk of faecal contamination.

Sukoon Water aims to establish decentralised water treatment plants that can each meet the drinking water needs of 7,000 to 10,000 people. Last year, at its pilot facility, it sold nearly 1.5 million litres of drinking water that meets World Health Organisation standards, and its goal is to reach 2 million litres this year.

In July, Adamjee will be among the young water entrepreneurs and advocates attending the biennial Singapore International Water Week’s (SIWW) Young Water Leaders Summit. The summit brings together the youth so that they can network and get advice from experts in the field. They also attend SIWW events such as the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize Lecture.

“I’m ready to learn from the other participants’ experiences and take advantage of opportunities for collaboration. I also want to find out about how other low-to-middle income countries are addressing water and sanitation issues, and use those insights to strengthen my own approach in Pakistan,” Adamjee said.

Making connections

Since the inaugural summit in 2014, about 200 young delegates have participated in the event, and their discussions have focused on issues such as flood risk management, sanitation, water governance and water security. They have also gotten tips from senior water professionals such as Henk Ovink, the Netherlands’ special envoy for international water affairs, and Diane d’Arras, president of the International Water Association.

In 2016, Nishana Ramsawak, a quality control supervisor at the Water and Sewerage Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, was one of the delegates. She said at the summit: “I learned a lot about different technologies and opportunities, and being here and seeing some of the technologies for myself also really helped.”

For young entrepreneurs such as Adamjee, part of the summit’s appeal is the potential for longer-term partnerships. “I think there is a lot of scope for cooperation. We can develop an online platform so that delegates working in the same fields or regions can share insights and collaborate. We can also form working groups that have virtual or in-person meetings biannually so that young leaders can guide and assist one another professionally,” he said.

In 2014, Prabin Rokaya, a young water entrepreneur from Nepal, shared at the summit how he had used $5,000 as seed funding to build 40 toilets in needy communities in his country. He was also involved in a project to raise water hand-pumps so that they would not be submerged during floods.

At the 2016 summit, Karmina Alejandro, who was the head of social media at the Philippines’ Maynilad Water Services company at the time, spoke about how the firm had halved its dropped call rates, reduced its costs and response time and improved its engagement rate by reaching out to customers through social media.

Yang Villa, a project development manager at the Philippines’ MetroPac Water Investments Corporation who attended the 2016 summit, said that learning about the other delegates’ work was both inspirational and useful. He said: “The best part about the summit was meeting like-minded young leaders who share the same passion for a better water future, and are well-placed in their respective workplaces and communities to make that future happen.”

Guiding young water entrepreneurs

Beyond the Young Water Leaders Summit, other SIWW programmes such as the HydroPreneur Programme and Hydro Pitch Day have also helped to nurture and develop new generations of water pioneers.

During the HydroPreneur Programme which takes place in the lead-up to the SIWW, aspiring water entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and products attend lessons and are paired with mentors who help them to refine their business models and pitches, with the goal of accelerating their work’s commercialisation. The participants are then given the chance to pitch to potential partners and investors during the SIWW’s Hydro Pitch Day.

David Pong, co-founder and chief executive of start-up WateROAM, took part in the programme in 2014. He and his teammates had developed a simple, portable, durable and affordable water filtration system that they believed could be a hit with hikers and travellers venturing deep into the wilderness, or be used to address the needs of rural and disaster-hit communities that have to resort to drinking contaminated water.

“Although it would have been easier to build a product for hikers and travellers, we learned through the programme that that was a highly competitive market that had not grown much in size over the years. We were encouraged to develop a more robust solution that could capitalise on the huge bottom-of-the-pyramid and humanitarian markets, and eventually decided that our best value proposition was to filter contaminated water in remote and disaster-hit regions,” he said.

The team received other invaluable advice, including how to conduct customer interviews to get more honest answers, and to develop their product so that it could be used by remote communities every day, rather than just in the aftermath of disasters. WateROAM’s products are now used by nearly 35,000 people in 14 countries, including Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong and Unchiprang refugee camps.

To commemorate the SIWW’s 10 years of excellence this year, its organisers have prepared activities ranging from an interactive word cloud that showcases past and future water industry trends, to sampling sessions of a beer made from recycled water known as NEWater. A timeline of the best water technologies will also be displayed on posters.

Sukoon Water’s Adamjee noted that Singapore’s innovations in water have inspired many people, including himself. He said: “The Singapore International Water Week and Young Water Leaders Summit are a perfect opportunity for youth to not only learn more about the Singapore water story, but also play an important role in a leading water conference.”

The 8th Singapore International Water Week will be held in conjunction with the 6th World Cities Summit and 4th CleanEnviro Summit Singapore from July 8 to 12 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. To register for the event, please click here.

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American microbiologist Rita Colwell was awarded the 2018 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize. Credit: SIWW

By Feng Zengkun
May 24 2018 (Eco-Business)

Many governments have made great strides in fighting cholera, an infectious disease that causes severe diarrhoea that can lead to dehydration and even death, thanks to the work of American microbiologist Rita Colwell.

In the 1970s, she found that the bacterium that causes cholera can occur naturally in aquatic environments associated with plankton, even though it was thought to be incapable of surviving more than a few hours outside of a human host.

In the 1980s, her laboratory also discovered that bacteria can be alive and cause harm even though they cannot be cultured, contrary to popular belief at the time. This breakthrough showed that the methods used then to determine the safety of water were inadequate, changing the world’s understanding of clean water and pushing governments to improve those methods.

For her work, Prof Colwell, who is a distinguished university professor at both the University of Maryland at College Park and John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, was awarded the 2018 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize.

Now awarded once every two years in the lead-up to the biennial Singapore International Water Week (SIWW), the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize honours outstanding contributions by individuals or organisations towards solving the world’s water challenges through innovative technologies, programmes or policies. Each laureate receives $300,000, a certificate and a gold medallion, and delivers the Water Lecture at the SIWW.

“I am truly honoured to be this year’s recipient of one of the most prestigious global water accolades, and I am confident that the pioneering spirit and innovative mindset represented by the prize will further encourage future generations of talents to realise our shared goal of providing access to safe water for all,” she said.

Shining a spotlight on water issues

Since the prize’s inception in 2008, there have been eight laureates: Dr Andrew Benedek (2008), Professor Gatze Lettinga (2009), the Yellow River Conservancy Commission in China (2010), Dr James Barnard (2011), Professor Mark van Loosdrecht (2012), the Orange County Water District in California in the United States (2014), Professor John Anthony Cherry (2016), and Prof Colwell.

Several laureates said that the prize has not only helped them to further their research, but has shone a critical spotlight on the world’s water problems and solutions.

At a time when the centre of global water research and expertise is shifting from being too western-centric, and we are seeing immense world-class activity in the field in Asia, it is important that the SIWW is held in Asia.

Professor John Anthony Cherry, Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize 2016 laureate

By the end of this year, for example, Prof Cherry plans to publish online the first 25 to 30 chapters of a new textbook that will replace his own 1979 book, “Groundwater”, that was co-authored with fellow hydrogeologist Allan Freeze. Prof Cherry’s book has been held up as the gold standard in the field for the past 40 years.

The free e-book, which will have about 30 chapters added to it in 2019 and 30 more in 2020, will be the centrepiece of a new website that aims to collate the international scientific and engineering community’s knowledge of how to find, develop, protect and remediate groundwater to boost the world’s supply of water.

Prof Cherry noted that winning the prize has been invaluable to his work on the project. He said: “I was able to find more participants for the e-book because I received more invitations to speak at locations across the globe, including in countries that I had not visited previously. With the project now entering a major fundraising stage, I also expect that the prestige associated with the prize will be most helpful.

Dr Benedek, who pioneered the development and use of low-pressure membranes in water treatment, said that work in the field has increased dramatically since he was awarded the prize in 2008. “The technology’s commercialisation globally has improved the quality and availability of water for more than a billion people,” he said.

He continued: “Most of this increase would have happened even without the prize, but I believe that it accelerated the increase, especially in Asia where most of the increase has occurred.”

Since winning the prize, he has been developing technologies to recycle the energy and nutrients in wastewater and solid waste. “I believe that our work will significantly enhance the sustainability of our planet, and receiving the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize was the critical catalyst that enabled all this to happen,” he said.

Prof van Loosdrecht, who won the prize for inventing an energy-saving method to treat used water, has had the same experience. “At the time of the award, I was developing another sustainable and cost-effective technology that purifies water using aerobic granular sludge. This is now on the market as the Nereda technology,” he said.

“Although the water market is considered very conservative, the Nereda technology has been implemented at more than 40 municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants worldwide. It certainly helped that its inventor was a recipient of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize,” he noted.

He is now working on creating high performance materials from wastewater sludge, with the goal of contributing to a circular economy and making wastewater treatment cost-neutral through the sale of these materials. “Being a laureate of the prize gives you great recognition and attention for your projects and ideas,” he said.

A global gathering for water

The laureates said that the SIWW itself has been key to boosting the global water and wastewater industry. “The organisers have done an outstanding job in a short time and made the SIWW and its associated programmes the most important technical and commercial conference on the planet,” Dr Benedek said.

Prof van Loosdrecht, who was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize this year for his work using microbiological technology to reduce the cost of wastewater treatment, noted that the gathering of industry representatives, engineers and policymakers at the event helps to accelerate the development of sustainable water systems that are essential for liveable cities and secure water supplies.

“At a time when the centre of global water research and expertise is shifting from being too western-centric, and we are seeing immense world-class activity in the field in Asia, it is important that the SIWW is held in Asia,” said Prof Cherry.

To commemorate the SIWW’s 10 years of excellence this year, its organisers have planned a slate of activities, including an interactive word cloud that showcases past and future water industry trends, sampling sessions of a beer made from recycled water known as NEWater, and a timeline of the best water technologies displayed on posters.

Prof Cherry summarised: “The SIWW is becoming the primary global meeting event for water science and engineering, and it will only continue to improve.”

The 8th Singapore International Water Week will be held in conjunction with the 6th World Cities Summit and 4th CleanEnviro Summit Singapore from July 8 to 12 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. To register for the event, please click here.

This story was originally published by Eco-Business

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