EcoFiltro...and ND Connections

Today I had the awesome opportunity to tour the factory of a company/charity started by a Notre Dame alum, Philip Wilson. He decided at age 40 that he wanted to dedicate the next decade of his life to serving humanity, and boy is he doing that in a big way with his social project: EcoFiltro. (http://www.ecofiltro.org) He has figured out a way to finance an amazing charitable effort with only 30% of his customers paying for the innovative, sustainable filter. The filter itself is unbelievably simple in the way that it functions, and provides endless access to clean water for families who otherwise wouldn't have it. My Spanish teacher here in Guate said her family has EcoFiltro, and uses it for all of their cooking, washing and drinking. 90% of the water in Guatemala is contaminated, which means over a million people here drink water that is causing their bodies harm. Not only has water consumption gone up since the introduction of EcoFiltro, the number of waterborne illnesses has gone down. Sorry if I sound like an EcoFiltro commercial...I'm just so impressed by this ND grad's passion for serving humanity and his country. Here are several pictures from the factory. If you're interested in learning more about EcoFiltro and Philip Wilson, check out their website which has some informative videos and ways to help their cause.

The original mixture of Guatemalan clay and sawdust...kept at 6% humidity I think he said?

 They have an organic garden in the back there, where the food that the employees eat for lunch each day is grown. 

Mixing the clay/sawdust mix for exactly 6 minutes.

 Each filter is made by hand to ensure quality.

 The molded filters are placed in biodegradable bags where they dry for 7 days.

 Serial numbers are put on each filter to track where it goes.

 Mr. Wilson told the workers he would build them a soccer field if they maintained it.
 The employees play soccer from 4:30 to 6pm every day. They play area companies and are undefeated. Last week they beat the team of Police Officers from Antigua...badly.

 The kilns where the filters are fired for 9 hours. 

 Filters waiting for the next step...

 Filters being soaked...

This guy paints on the perfect amount of colloidal silver, 

which is the magic of the filtration system.

 Filters waiting for inspection. 

 The filters that did not pass inspection 

This means they didn't filter fast enough (2 liters per hour) or they filtered too fast (meaning they didn't filter out the gross stuff in the water)

All finished!

Mr. Wilson has people from lots of villages competing to create new designs to house the EcoFiltro. If they can show him that they can consistently produce a container with the correct specifications, he awards them a year contract and makes them available to all EcoFiltro customers for purchase. The brown containers to his left were attempts (not quite cylindrical). Further down on the right are some fancier designs that people have come up with. 

The original inventor of EcoFiltro, Fernando Mazariegos, is a scientist from Guatemala. Though he is in his eighties, he is still hard at work trying to come up with an even cheaper way to filter water. They are experimenting with just using one layer of the filter material on top of a bucket to filter water as well as the bigger filters do. 

Cross-section of the filters...

Mr. Wilson gave 500 pounds of clay to local Guatemalan artists and had them make sculptures that adorn the grounds of the factory. 

 There are even dorms at the factory for those employees that have particularly long commutes.

A view of the entire factory.

P.S. Appropriately, as I toured a water filtration factory....a pipe broke somewhere underground this morning. The entire city of Antigua is going on 12 hours without water. Today has been one big lesson in water being a luxury.