Clinton Global Initiative: Kevin McGovern, Founder of The Water Initiative, On Water & Social Entrepreneurship

By | October 15 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Kevin McGovern, Founder of The Water Initiative, speaks with Katrina of envisionGood.tv, at Clinton Global Initiative. Kevin reports that 5,000 children/day die from water-born diseases and explains what his new social enterprise is doing to address this urgent problem. Learn about The Water Initiative, and how Kevin is leveraging his 20+ years of experience in the corporate and business world to make an impact on society and a difference in people’s lives throughout the developing world and beyond.

The Full Transcript:

KATRINA: So here we are at the Clinton Global Initiative, I’m with Kevin of The Water Initiative. Kevin, can you please share what is The Water Initiative, how did you get involved?

KEVIN: I’ve been in the industry of point-of-drinking, or point-of-use, water, for about twenty years. I was a founder and owner of [a company] called KX Industries, and what we did was we created, invented, and supplied, the first PUR filter for the company that sold out to Proctor & Gamble. And then we created the first end-of-tap filter for Britta, and the first refrigerator filter, water refrigerator filter, for Electrolux.

When we sold the company KX, I wanted to think about what I wanted to do next, in terms of impacting the world. I had done enough entrepreneurial work to know that I wanted my next venture to be something that was really impacting the world more than some of the consumer products that I had been involved in. So I really wanted to work on water.

KATRINA: [Why water?]

KEVIN: Over five thousand children die every day from water-born diseases. And contaminated water is perhaps the biggest health issue in the world today. So I really wanted to do something about that and hopefully make a dent in solving the problem of water-born diseases.

KATRINA: [Tell us about The Water Initiative.]

KEVIN: We founded The Water Initiative about two and a half years ago. And really what it is is to find solutions, water solutions for point-of-drinking. And then, to scale those solutions through a network of micro-entrepreneurs, in each region and then around the world.

KATRINA: [Why focus on point-of-drinking?]

KEVIN: The reason it’s point-of-drinking is because I think that is a key answer to the water problem. We have large water treatment plants but only about two percent of the water that’s actually treated, people drink or use for cooking. And yet eighty percent of the cost of those water treatment plants is to make the water drinkable. Seems like a lot of wasted money, and it’s a tremendous amount of mismanagement of water: leaky pipes, discharge, etc. So we thought the solution should be the closer to your lips that you purify the water, the more you can combat water-born diseases.

KATRINA: [Why create a business instead of a non-profit organization?]

KEVIN: We decided it needed to be a business because we’re convinced that the best way to sustain it, we wanted to have economic incentives so that the people in the community would buy the units, would sell it peer-to-peer, and then would maintain the units by replacing the filters. In each stage we create economic incentives so that we enrich not only the health of the community, but we create micro-entrepreneurs all around the world.

KATRINA: [Where does The Water Initiative operate?]

KEVIN: We picked Mexico as our pilot country. Not just to solve the problems in Mexico, but to build disruptive technologies and a platform distribution system that we can roll out around the world.

KATRINA: [Tell us about water in Mexico.]

KEVIN: We went into Mexico thinking we’d be working on pathogens first. And we found in the urban and peri-urban areas, pathogens are not a big issue as some other elements because they chlorinate the water in Mexicoquite a bit – to such an extent that Mexico is now the number two consumer of bottled water in the world. Because people don’t like the taste of the chlorine, and they don’t like the smell of the chlorine.

But that wasn’t an issue we that wanted to combat, just the chlorine, what could we do that we could solve a real health issue? And as communicated to us, after we sampled some twenty different cities in Mexico, we came to the conclusion that the biggest health problem in Mexico as well as a real health problem around the world, and we’re seeing more and more publicity about it, is aresenic. Excessive arsenic, which according to many, is the number one carcinogenic in the world, and also causes Diabetes II, according to the latest studies from Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, and a few other institutions. And also, excessive fluoride. And people say, “well I take fluoride in my water for my cavities”. But the fact of the matter is that excessive fluoride is a bone deformer. It creates mottled teeth, it creates malformations in children, and is a real, real problem. And Mexico suffers from both, as many parts of the world do. And so we decided to tackle those two issues first.

KATRINA: [Tell us about your success to-date in Mexico.]

KEVIN: We have now created the first point-of-drinking, in-home water solution that completely eliminates aresenic, as well as takes out the chlorine from the water so they like the taste, and also takes out the pathogens. So it’s a fully integrated, home-based, water system that the people buy, they sell, they create businesses around.

KATRINA: What is your philosophy on taking on a global challenge like water?

KEVIN: We’re all working on a common cause. This is not just what we can achieve. This is only with God’s help. So we really believe this is a humanity-based situation. And with God’s help, we’ll accomplish our goals.