Aguadapt: From Artisanal Production to Award-Winning Innovation

Rainwater is naturally free of extremely hard-to-remove arsenic and fluoride that plagues community wells  throughout our region, which cause severe health impacts like dental and crippling skeletal fluorosis (permanent staining of the teeth and bones becoming deformed and brittle), cognitive development and learning disabilities in children, and several types of cancer. However, on its own, rainwater is not clean enough to be considered safe for human consumption. For this reason, we at Caminos de Agua developed an elegantly simple ceramic water filter nearly 10 years ago that removes biological contaminants commonly present in water – making stored rain, and many other water sources, fit for human consumption. 

That’s why back in 2013, we began producing our ceramic water filters in small-scale artisanal kilns at our experimental field center, just outside of San Miguel, as a critical final step for rainwater harvesting systems to assure safe drinking water. By 2017, as part of our own design philosophy, we certified the filter with COFEPRIS (the Mexican version of the EPA), which piqued the interest of more NGO partners who started using the filter to provide clean water in their own projects, before long reaching thousands of families throughout Mexico, as well as in Haiti, Guatemala, and Columbia. 

As demand increased, and after a series of natural disasters in 2017-2018, we began a process of redesigning our ceramic filter to make it easier to deploy, adaptable to all common containers, and simple to attach to universal plumbing – resulting in it being ideal for providing safe drinking water to communities most at risk as well as to those displaced by natural disasters and other emergencies. Aguadapt was ultimately born and its design won the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Innovation Showcase Award in 2019 in Washington, D.C.

AFTER THE PANDEMIC: AGUADAPT REACHES HOMES BEYOND OUR REGION

Throughout the initial surge of Covid, Aguadapt was largely put on the backburner while we targeted the majority of our efforts to expand clean water access to those most impacted by the spread of the pandemic, living in extreme water scarcity conditions.

Over the past year, our Tech and Production Teams, along with new Caminos’ Board Member, Charlie Sellers, Ph.D. – a renowned expert on the development and deployment of appropriate technologies for emerging economies – began restructuring our Aguadapt production together with our new production partners. After months of testing and extensive overhauls, we have created an extremely lean production process, a new water system design and materials, and, most importantly, an even more robust, adaptable, and effective water filter.

Today, we have begun to broaden the distribution of Aguadapt with much more expansion to come shortly. We are now using the new generation of Aguadapt in our own projects, and we have already begun shipping our first major production run of the new improved product to partners in Chiapas – Mexico’s southernmost state

Photo: Matthieu (in white), Research & Development Coordinator at Caminos and Nico (carrying boxes), Aguadapt Production Assistant, packing up a truck with 500 filters bound for community homes in Chiapas, Mexico.

In Chiapas, one of the most marginalized regions in all of Mexico, water is a chronic issue, especially among indigenous communities where waterborne diseases – caused by pathogens in the water supply – are common. As explained by Bruno Morales from Concern America, a partner organization working in Chiapas who purchases and then distributes Aguadapt water filters to community homes in their own projects:

“We [Concern America] focus our work on mainly ethnic Tzotzil, Tzeltal, and Tojolabales communities, historically marginalized, internally displaced by conflicts, and which have always been the main target of oppression and exploitation.”

In the words of Arturo, a user of Aguadapt that was purchased by Concern America for their projects in Chiapas:

“It’s very practical, it’s really easy to care for, it’s very economical, and very easy to use. Also, the results are marvelous, the quality of water is very good, it has no taste, color, or smell. It’s very simple.”

While our primary focus continues to be on creating greater access to safe drinking water and preventing the horrible health consequences of ingesting contaminated water in our region, we are also very excited to see our technology make a real difference for families and communities elsewhere in Mexico and beyond. The first 1,000 new generation Aguadapt filters for Concern America is just the beginning. With all of our  improvements online, many other NGO partners will receive more filters, faster, to improve the quality of life for the families they serve.

Aguadapt is a serious breakthrough in terms of water technology for the people in our watershed, but the need goes far beyond our region. Water scarcity and water contamination are unfortunately becoming increasingly more serious issues worldwide, and, emergency relief, due to climate change and other disruptive events like the pandemic, make the availability and use of our Aguadapt all the more urgent.