Procter & Gamble Co. said Thursday that total shipments of its Pur water-purification product to survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami would eclipse the combined total provided in half a dozen worldwide disasters in the past 12 months. The need for pure water has been identified by relief organizations as one of the top priorities in communities from Malaysia in southeast Asia to the horn of Africa. Greg Allgood, associate director of safe drinking water at P&G, said the company provided 5 million of the four-gram packets during the past year to victims of disasters ranging from last December's earthquake in Iran to Caribbean hurricanes this fall. "It's basically been used in every disaster this year," he said. The small packets are easy to ship and use and were created by P&G in anticipation of markets in developing nations.
At a cost of 8 cents a packet to produce, the more than half-million-dollar donation by P&G is just a slice of the millions of dollars in cash and supplies that U.S. companies are donating to victims of the tsunami. That's in addition to the initial $35 million in aid earmarked by the U.S. government. Allgood, who was in New York City Thursday on vacation, said P&G isn't finished. "All I've been doing is answering phone calls," he said, taking requests from relief groups that want supplies of Pur. "We're committed to provide everything we have available." He estimates that P&G has the capacity to produce another 9 million packets at its plant in Karachi, Pakistan. "We're making it as fast as we can," he said.
P&G, which acquired the Pur name in its 1999 acquisition of Recovery Engineering Inc., had been working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1995 to develop an easy-to-use water-purification system for crisis situations. A packet, which contains iron sulfate and chlorine as its active ingredients, is dumped into 10 liters of dirty water and stirred. The dirt falls to the bottom, gathering a sort of "dirt magnet." The water is drinkable in 20 minutes after being poured through a cloth.
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"It's really the same technology we use to clean our water in Cincinnati," Allgood said. "We've just reverse-engineered it (for smaller quanities.)" The 6.2 million packets P&G is providing through the non-profit Americares and Samaritan's Purse are enough to clean 62 million liters of water, or about 16.4 million gallons. In addition to cash, donations of everything from diapers, antibiotics and a gel called OdorScreen meant to curb the stench of decaying bodies are on the way to the region in the wake of the disaster.
Among the big corporate givers are Pfizer Inc., which is donating $10 million in cash and $25 million worth of drugs to relief agencies; Coca-Cola Co., which is donating $10 million; Exxon Mobil Corp., which is giving $5 million; and Citigroup Inc., which is contributing $3 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also pledged $3 million. Pharmaceutical and health-care products companies were among the biggest givers. Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories Inc. are each donating $2 million and sending drugs and other health-care supplies to the region. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is donating $1 million in cash and $4 million in antibiotics and antifungal drugs. Also, General Electric Co., which has major operations in the Cincinnati area, is giving $1 million. |