Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, is a water stressed continent, and this has led to various problems, including the sale of bottled water in most grocery stores at exorbitant prices. Most of Africa is developing and poor, and having to pay so much for a life-saving human right is just not the way it should be.

The South African inventor of I-Drop travelled throughout Africa recently and became severely ill from drinking contaminated water in a displacement camp in 2014. He was struck by the fact that while a few hundred children had no access to safe water, these same little grocery stores all had a water supply on site but not a method of purifying the water, hence the sale of so much bottled water.

In an effort to ensure that no one ever has to face a choice between drinking unsafe or unaffordable water, the team spent 18 months developing a robust solution to the problem. It was their intention to not only provide an affordable drinking water supply, but also to reduce the amount of plastic waste that naturally occurs from the use of the bottled water, as most individuals in Africa are not yet well-versed in the intricacies of conservation and pollution.

The idea is for I-Drop to install purification and dispensing units at the point of sale. The water supply comes at no cost to the retailers, and shoppers can bring their own containers to refill at around 80% cheaper than bottled water. This means that everyone can afford to drink healthy water and the environment is also protected as their will be far less plastic waste dotted around the countryside leeching poisons into the ground.

I-Drop aims to monitor the units, which will ensure that costs remain low, and to split the revenue with the retailers, thereby also driving economic activity in the communities.

I-Drop would meant the ability of business to deliver meaningful social change as well as profit and could well be the perfect solution to Africa’s drinking water problems as well as saving millions of lives annually.

Get bottled water dispensers and mains water dispenser from Living-Water.