Tamil Nadu group wins award for simple way to purify drinking water

An organization formed in 1988 by a group of dedicated and service-minded women in Tamil Nadu, India, has won a prestigious 2006 Tech Museum Award for its development of a simple and effective way of purifying drinking water. The Center for Development of Disadvantaged People, located in AshokNagar, Chennai, has created a local grass-root based, self-managed, simple, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly purification technique that assists self-help group women to produce, use and sell 100 percent purified bottled water through an integrated system of local plants, sand, and solar power.

Raw water is filtered through powdered seeds of local plant materials including, Moringa oleifera and Phyllanthus emblica—natural flocculants—and through coarse sand, charcoal, and gravel, which reduce total aerobic mesophilic bacterial, E coli, coliform, pseudomonas, and yeast counts, and turbidity to World Health Organization acceptable standards for potable water. The filter system produces pure bottled drinking water at a production cost of $1 per 225 liters per day per unit, compared to a market cost of about $75 for the same amount of water.

Installing the units costs $400 and CDDP provides a testing kit for $3 per month to test the bottled water every day before it is sold. The local self help group of about 15 women are able maintain the unit by themselves, getting water for their families’ consumption and also to sell to the community at a profit.

CDDP works with people who are disadvantaged educationally, economically, socially and culturally to help them help themselves by developing self-help and self-governing collective development activities. Working in 60 villages in Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts in Tamil Nadu and five villages in Andhrapradesh state, CDDP helps people organize themselves, works on illiteracy and education, carries out applied research on rural and urban development including indigenous medicines and agricultural practices, assists other voluntary organizations, and works with individuals, government departments and national and international agencies to achieve its goals.

This story is compiled from information provided on the websites of the Tech Museum Awards and the Center for Development of Disadvantaged People.

Contact information:

The Tech Museum Awards, The Tech Museum of Innovation, 201 South Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113, USA. Email. 

Center for Development of Disadvantaged People, No. 12, 65th Street, 12th Avenue, AshokNagar, Chennai-600 083, India. Email.

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