Compared to 2012…
Absolute Emissions: DOWN 39.9%
Per Employee: DOWN 38.2%
We have teamed up with Carbon Footprint to offset 507 tonnes of carbon in a Gold Standard VER project – Sustainable Deployment of the LifeStraw® Family in rural Kenya.
Project Description
The Lifestraw®Family units treat contaminated drinking water via a special microbiological filter. This reduces the demand for conventional water treatment that is achieved through boiling water with non-renewable biomass. With the assistance of carbon finance, this project becomes economically sustainable and, moreover, provides a significant improvement in public health.
Over a billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. Water borne disease is a leading cause of illness in the developing world, contributing to the death of on average 2,000,000 children every year.
In rural western Kenya, residents drink from water sources containing microbiological contamination. This leads to diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases, and accounts for, according to the World Health Organisation, the third leading cause of death in Kenya among children and adults. To attempt to guard against this, the prevailing practice in rural Kenya is to boil drinking water with wood. However, many families lack the resources to afford the wood, which is scarce and demonstrably non-renewable.
By combining carbon finance with the deployment of water treatment systems, this project will directly combine sustainable humanitarian development with international carbon markets. This will contribute to a nascent field wherein humanitarian goals are met in an economically sustainable and accountable way, rather than simply through unsustainable charity and aid. Through distributing LifeStraw® Family water treatment systems to over 1 million people, this project has the potential to dramatically reduce incidence of waterborne disease for more than 4 million people and reduce the use of firewood.
How LifeStraw® Works & Reduces CO2 Emissions
The LifeStraw® Family is a point-of-use microbial water treatment system intended for routine use in low-income settings. The system can filter up to 18,000 litres of water, enough to supply a family of 5 with microbiologically clean drinking water for 3 years, thus removing the need for repeat intervention. The system requires no electricity or additional consumables beyond the unit itself. It complies with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “Guide Standard and Protocol for Testing Microbiological Water Purifiers” providing treated water that is as good or better than boiling for microbiological contamination.
This project will provide access to clean drinking water to over 4 million rural Kenyans. The socioeconomic benefits of access to clean drinking water are well documented and include:
- Reduced time spent provisioning water
- Reduced cost for families
- Reduced child and adult morbidity and mortality
- Improved attendance at school
- Increased productivity
- Generally a sense of hope and opportunity
This project will also directly employ several thousand Kenyans during the deployment and several hundred during annual monitoring, education and maintenance activities.
Each LifeStraw® family unit reduces carbon by 3 tCO2 over a 3 year period. RG have contributed 169 LifeStraw® Family Units to this project.
“I think it is fantastic that RG are involved in a project with such huge socioeconomic benefits and able to help bring a basic necessity to Kenyan families, the project ties in with our own corporate commitment to reduce water usage and highlights the importance of conserving this natural resource.” Colorado Goldwyn, Environmental Manager.
