One million homes to get clean drinking water
Over one million households in Kakamega will receive water filters free of charge next week after the launch of a ‘Carbon for Water’ programme.
The donation by Vestergaard Frandsen aims at prevention of water borne diseases in the region. It is a follow up of earlier campaigns against malaria, diarrhoea and HIV/Aids the company carried out in Lurambi constituency in 2009.
The programme which will run from next Monday until mid May, will be launched by the Public Health and Sanitation PS Mark Bor in Kakamega.
Mikkel Frandsen, the CEO of Vestergaard which specialises in disease control and textiles, said the company will distribute 900,000 Life-Straw family water filters to 90 per cent of all households in Western Province. The filters will provide more than four million residents of the province access to safe drinking water at home, Frandsen said.
Vestergaard Frandsen will repair or replace the filters when needed, at no charge, for a period of at least ten years. He said the cost of the filters will be reimbursed through carbon financing. “This funding model gives companies in developed countries potential revenue, in the form of carbon credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries,” said Frandsen. “Carbon credits can then be sold to carbon credit buyers that want to reduce their carbon footprint or improve their environmental stewardship. The revenue generated, in large part, will be re-invested into the program to make it sustainable over a 10-year period,” he said. Those using the filters will no longer need to purify drinking water by boiling using fossils fuels that emit greenhouse gases.
Frandsen said this behavioral change is expected to reduce more than two million tonnes of carbon emission. “The programme is ambitious and visionary. It is eight times larger than any other registered project in the Gold Standard Voluntary Market,” said Frandsen.
He said it is one of the first programmes that directly links low-carbon emissions with access to safe drinking water, positively impacting health.