22
March
2019
|
08:00
Europe/Berlin

Water for all: World Water Day 2019

When you’re home and thirst strikes, you pour a glass of water. When you’re exercising and become parched, you reach for ice-cold relief. Yet 3 in 10 people globally lack access to safely managed drinking water services, 6 in 10 people lack access to safely managed sanitation facilities (United Nations, 2019), and almost 1,000 children die everyday from water born illnesses – more than Malaria and HIV combined. What most of us take for granted, others would consider a luxury.

In honor of World Water Day, and in celebration of the companies working to change those statistics, we invite you to point your attention toward a Kuehne + Nagel freight-forwarding customer who has been working since 2004 to provide access to clean drinking water. Access that has changed the lives of girls who could otherwise not attend school because of the hours spent and miles walked to source clean water for their community, and of children and families overwhelmed by sickness spread through dangerously dirty water thanks to poor sanitation and the absence of infrastructure and resources. The Kuehne + Nagel seafreight team in our Dulles, Virginia office has partnered with them on this righteous mission for the past ten years; we are proud to share their story.

You might know them by their acronym, P&G, or by any one of the products you likely use to clean your home, office, or even your child – from Pampers, to Bounty, to Tide, Dawn, Crest, and many more. Procter & Gamble creates products to clean bodies, clean counters, clean teeth and even babies’ bottoms – and…for the past 15 years, they’ve been cleaning dirty water.

It began twenty years ago, when one of P&G’s brilliant scientists followed a leap of faith assumption–that he and his team could create a product capable of cleaning water, so women in water-stressed regions could save time and resources recycling the water they use to wash their family’s clothes. After some trial and error, these laundry scientists discovered a way to clean that water using a simple powder technology. But solving that one problem wasn’t enough, because Procter & Gamble believed that if wash water could be removed of its filth and grime, then undoubtedly water could be made clean and pure enough to drink.

The solution arrived in the form of a small envelope that could fit in the smallest of pant or dress pockets – a portable packet that held promise. A life-changing product derived from the powerful combination of science and compassion, to address one of world’s most pressing problems.

Since 2004, the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program has provided 15 billion liters of clean water through a thirty-minute process of pour, stir, settle and filter. 15 billion liters that have altered the lives of millions. Lives forever changed because of a powder technology that packs the power of a water treatment plant into a 4-gram packet.

The P&G production facility that makes these life-changing P&G Purifier of Water packets is in Singapore, and they work with more than 150 partners around the world to get them to families and children who are in need.

“To see children drink clean water instead of the dirty water that makes them sick and have to miss school touches your heart. And it’s a community of folks that make those moments happen. From our NGO partners on the ground, to our innovators and scientists, to our logistics partners like Kuehne + Nagel, this program transforms the lives of millions of people.”- Julie deSylva, P&G Senior Communications Manager

Here at Kuehne + Nagel, the partnership with P&G is one we deeply appreciate, because it shows the best of business in action, and the power of partnership born from shared values and complementary skills. To learn more about the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, visit www.csdw.org.

“There are so many people around this planet that struggle with the basic necessities that we take for granted. To know there are organizations out there that strive to make this planet a little better is encouraging, but to be a part of it is extraordinarily special.” – Jen Griffin, Kuehne + Nagel Seafreight and Emergency Relief Expert

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