Cascade Engineering, Dow Chemical, International Aid partner on water filters

from M Live

by Matt Vande Bunte | The Grand Rapids Press

CASCADE TOWNSHIP -- Plastic pellets, heated to 450 degrees, shot into a 1,760-ton press. After cooling for a minute, out dropped a bucket.

A plastic filter made at Cascade Engineering Inc. may be just a drop in the bucket for the world's 1.1 billion people lacking clean water. But local backers say it is poised to make a big splash in global health and the local economy.

"We're on the verge of this just going gangbusters," said Robert Goodwin, chief operating officer of Spring Lake-based International Aid.

Saturday is the United Nations' World Water Day, and a pair of local ventures merging business and faith-based aid are playing a role.

In partnership with Cascade Engineering, International Aid is raising money to place HydrAid bio-sand water filters in parts of the world where it does relief and development work.

About 10,000 plastic filters are in Central America, with 200,000 concrete versions worldwide.

Dow Chemical Co. of Midland will donate 2 million pounds of plastic resin for about 300,000 filters.

The 7-pound HydrAid container uses gravity, four layers of sand and bacteria-eating micro-organisms to filter parasites and other causes of waterborne disease from up to 75 gallons per day. It costs $32 to make.

Dow's donation will reduce that cost so International Aid can do more educating about the health benefits of clean water.

The hope is, with more filters, more study will confirm the simple technology's impact. That data could attract public and private funding to develop a commercial model.

"The thing that's lacking is long-term sustainability and a business plan," Goodwin said. "The private sector can drive this change."

Right now, "there's not enough knowledge about the technology to create the demand," he said.

"This gives us an opportunity to start out on the philanthropic front, but also look at it as an evolving business model," said Nancy Fullerton, Dow's manager of corporate citizenship.

Aqua Clara Foundation, a faith-based nonprofit in Holland, this year hopes to put 1,000 filters of a different kind in Africa, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru with help from Ohio-based Fairmount Minerals Ltd., an industrial sand manufacturer with a Grand Haven subsidiary.

The filters, developed with help from Hope College, have cleaned water at a test site in Kenya and could boost third-world commerce.

"If you're going to bring a product into a developing country, you need a distribution system," said Chuck Fowler, Fairmount president and CEO. "We're creating and designing products that we can get to those (native) entrepreneurs. That's the way you solve the poverty side of the equation.