With the reckless excess of insurance giant A.I.G. in the news recently and bitter memories of Enron still lingering, it’s refreshing to hear about a big company doing something positive without revenue or other self interests in mind. But that’s just what product conglomerate Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and an innovator named Greg Allgood did with an invention called the PUR water purifier.
True to his surname, Allgood is one of the good guys afloat in corporate America. A public-health specialist with P&G, Allgood is the kind of ethical crusader you usually only see in the movies – an Atticus Finch type who looked beyond dollar signs and brought a major corporation along with him. The story began years ago when P&G went to work developing a product with the Centers for Disease Control to improve chlorine water treatment (which kills bacteria and viruses in water). The partnership produced a product better than either party could have imagined – a powder that not only killed bacteria and viruses, but also caused suspended solids, heavy metals and parasites to clump together so they could be filtered out of water. The technology was named PUR® Purifier of Water™, and the powder was packaged in individual packets for quick and easy use. A person simply opens a packet, sprinkles the powder into 10 liters of water, stirs it thoroughly and then pours the water through a cloth to strain it. Within a half-hour, a teaspoon of the powder turns more than 2 gallons of dirty H2O into cleaner, drinkable water. Best of all the powder only cost pennies to produce.
Problem was, after producing the powder, P&G had trouble turning a profit with it – even with low production costs. And, in a world where profit margins are the bottom line, without flourishing markets, the powder would have to be discontinued. That’s when Allgood stepped in. Knowing the amount of good the powder could do in developing nations, as well as during emergencies like Hurricane Katrina where people were without clean water for weeks, Allgood convinced P&G executives to forgo profits and continue producing the powder. While most other companies would balk at such a request, because P&G is an exceptionally progressive and socially conscious corporation, they went for it. As a result, Allgood was put in charge of P&G’s Children Safe Drinking Water Program, which works with emergency relief and non-profit markets to provide PUR to children and their families in developing worlds. With more 50,000 children dying every day from diseases caused by unsafe drinking water, Allgood and P&G believe this innovative technology can have a major impact in places where there are no water-treatment facilities.
Thus far, Allgood and P&G’s efforts have yielded millions of liters of safe drinking water. The PUR packets have been used by non-profits like UNICEF, Red Cross and World Vision to provide aid after the tsunami in Asia, and after hurricanes and floods in places like the Caribbean, Philippines and Bangladesh. Elsewhere, Johns Hopkins has reported that PUR reduced diarrhea by more than 90 percent in a Liberian refugee camp. The work of P&G and Allgood also is receiving acclaim from an innovation perspective. The PUR water purifier was named one of the "Top 10 Innovations of 2008" by Popular Mechanics, whose editors actually watched as Allgood used PUR to turn a jar of “murky liquid containing fecal matter” into “clear, potable water” that both they and Allgood guzzled down. It’s hard to say which is more impressive – the water purification technology itself or P&G’s willingness to produce a fiscally failing product to help the world at large. At a time when corporate greed and Gordon-Gecko morals seem to dominate the business landscape, watching a company sacrifice profit for decency might actually be the greater invention.
