Earth911 Podcast: Rich Razgaitis on the Future of Drinking Water

The availability of safe, fresh drinking water will become a more pressing issue as the climate crisis progresses. Our guest today, Rich Razgaitis, started FloWater, a maker of water refill stations that can purify local water, allowing people to refill bottles safely and quickly. The company also sells reverse-osmosis purified water in recyclable, reusable aluminum bottles and a faucet filter attachment that removes many of the impurities that can still be found in U.S. drinking water.

We discuss the role of publicly accessible water refill stations in providing access to water, and the reduction of soda and other canned and bottled beverages and water when water is easily available in offices and schools. Check out FloWater’s projects in the Navajo Nation and local school systems. We also consider how efficient, hyper-local water filtration services can potentially allow the reuse of greywater — post-use water generated by an office building or university — on-site. Los Angeles is currently providing some water that has been processed from local greywater sources — these technologies can be miniaturized and distributed to help water impoverished communities build a sustainable local water supply.

Drought will reduce water supplies and extreme heat will increase demand for water. Across the planet today, 785 million people do not have reliable access to drinking water and as many as 884 million are without safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. We’ve made progress, bringing water and sanitation services to an additional 1.4 billion people since the turn of the century. But there is a long, long way to go to providing safe drinking water for all of the people on the planet while leaving enough freshwater for the rest of nature.

Learn more about FloWater at https://www.drinkflowater.com/.