Contaminated drinking water is often a big issue after a natural disaster.
A group in Stratford is doing its part to help communities around the world by building ready-to-use water purifiers.
The Aquabox program was founded more than 15 years ago by the Stratford Rotary Club, which assembles the multi-layered filtration devices.
According to Walt Bathe, the committee chair for the Aquabox program, they’ve been sent to about 13 different countries.
“The majority of them have gone to Haiti,” he said.
Each Aquabox costs about $40 to manufacture and will give a family of four enough fresh drinking water for a full year.
“The dirty water goes in the top. It’s filtered by our ceramic filters. The clean water comes out the bottom and the spigot is ready to use.”
Aquaboxes ready to shipped out to overseas countries. (April 2022)
“[If] fire or flood or hurricane has taken out an existing water system, the Aquabox bridges that gap until that water system comes back online,” explained Dan Kane, secretary of the Aquabox committee.
The purifiers are built and packaged by volunteers in Stratford and then shipped to a Toronto facility where they’ll eventually be handed out by the GlobalMedic, a Canadian distributor for emergency disaster relief.
“We bring it back to our warehouse, the full kits, and when there’s a disaster that strikes we can deploy them very fast and get people clean drinking water right away,” said Laura Garrioch, GlobalMedic’s emergency programs officer.
Volunteers assembled about 500 Aquaboxes on Saturday.
Since 2006 the committee has shipped out more than 12,000 units.
“Which accounts for just over 62 million liters of bottle-able water,” said Bathe.
The program has raised enough money to build another batch of Aquaboxes later this year, but volunteers are hoping to raise even more money to keep the project going.
“Water you need right away,” said Kane. “Having clean, safe drinking water is what bridges the gap to get all the other services in place.”