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I wonder if any of our comments actually changed @ClearerThinkingRegrants mind about anything?

The more I research the space the more I think this project is slept on. I actually like this idea quite a bit!

There are other products in the water purification space, but I think its worth considering the pros and cons of each type. Filter-based systems seem to be the most oft-cited alternative. They can be cheaper, though the most direct analogue for this use case is the LifeStraw Family which typically retails $69 (https://lifestraw.com/products/lifestraw-family-emergency-water-filter), the same ballpark as Water Box's target cost of $58.22. But the downside of filters is they're very slow (as a LifeStraw owner I can attest). Water Box is 4L in 1 minute compared to 0.2L per minute for LifeStraw Family (12L/hr). Filters also require more frequent replacement, which is both inconvenient and runs a risk of people using an ineffective filter and getting sick. UVC bulb lifetimes seem to be in the thousands of hours, functionally much longer than a filter. LifeStraw family lasts up to 18,000L, while a 1,000 hour bulb at 4L per minute gets you 240,000L (though other Water Box parts may be less durable). It's easy to write off convenience, but compliance matters. If a product is annoying to use (like filters can be) people won't use it as often, especially when boiling is an option, and especially when water is ostensibly clean, the use case they're specifically designing for.

The overall design certainly has merit, but this grant is specifically for a new model using a hand crank. The hand crank eliminates the dependence on reliable electricity, the main weakness of current UV light designs. The low-end ask to run that trial is $30k. $30k to test a water filter that's 20x faster than a typical filter and doesn't require electricity, the main drawback of the method. For me that's a very clear yes.

I'm perfectly fine with comparable products existing in the purification space, its important to let people decide which devices they find the most useful in different scenarios. I think this is a great idea if it works, but this grant is to fund a trial to learn what actual users have to say, and I for one would be very enthused find that out.

There are already tons of projects working in this field with mostly cheaper low-tech solutions. What most of these countries need is basic infrastructure.

@EmmaRolls Do you know the names of any such projects and how expensive their products are currently?

@NathanpmYoung UV water filters are already on the market but they are pricey technology and way too expensive for most people in these countries (e.g 400-500 USD). In comparison, projects like Lifestraw sell their products for around 30 USD unsubsidised. Unless this project could cut the cost to a few percent of current cost (almost certainly impossible) or give away millions of devices, I don’t think it would succeed in its objectives.

@EmmaRolls As you note, there are other products in the market but the fact the most people in the developing world default to boiling is a strong indication that they are not the products desired by the users. You mention Lifestraws. Theirs is a very clever product and the cost is low ... but ... most people find it annoying to drink water day after day through a straw.

@PaulBerg Lifestraw pitcher https://lifestraw.com/products/lifestraw-home

@GeorgeVii Tho there are ofc cheaper options that are independently tested that are half the price of these. (added benefit over uv of also removing heavy metals etc, downside of having to replace filter more often than you'd have to replace a bulb, but probably still cheaper given there are some very low cost of carbon filters on the market and lower up front cost & no electricity)

@GeorgeVii I've commented elsewhere (maybe too much) but I own the product you're citing, it is worth noting that it can be extremely obnoxious to use. The filter is very slow, its literally a slow drip. The LifeStraw site doesn't list the filter speed like they do on their other products, but user reports of 7 cups in 15 mins = 0.11L/min. The larger system (LifeStraw Family) is 0.2L/min at a slightly higher price point than this. Faster filters like Brita exist but they're not antimicrobial and don't fix this problem. Compare that to 4L/min for Water Box.

Paul mentioned people still default to boiling despite products like LifeStraw existing. As a user, the painfully slow speed is my best guess as to why.

@GregJustice Hmm, there are so many others tho, I won't list them all eg https://www.epicwaterfilters.com/collections/pitchers-bottles/products/epic-nano-water-filter-pitcher-navy-blue-removes-bacteria-virus-cysts

I mostly just think that even the estimated "at scale" costs are way too high, especially given I can find entire RO + UV filtration systems for 20 bucks https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-quality-stage-water-system-RO_1600211243884.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.26762180WC53ab
(Now maybe this is fake or takes a ton of effort or poor quality or whatever, but at the very least I'd want find out before spending a ton of time & grant money.)

"Paul mentioned people still default to boiling despite products like LifeStraw existing. As a user, the painfully slow speed is my best guess as to why."
I think the reason is much more likely to be culture, knowledge, cost, availability etc not that its slow.

@GeorgeVii Patents are an absolutely waste of time. You would be better off just manufacturing someone else's open design. The greatest water bottle in the world on paper (technology/design) is irrelevant, in my opinion, because unless it is both used widely and loved by its users there is little chance of it having any impact at all.

The only model that effectively incentivizes product developers to meet these two minimum criteria for sustainability is a for-profit model. "Non-profit" is a tax status, that is all, and for one simple reason I think it is insane to do a startup non-profit - if you fail, or even just improperly report your financials, it is possible to go to jail for fraud. Startups are so much less risky AND so much more conducive to successfully, plus in California you can operate an LLC as a charity and get almost all of the same benefits without any of the added burden/risk. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mark Zuckerberg are just two of probably many billionaires who run their foundations are for profit LLCs and as a result their foundations are much more likely to do things in a sustainable way.

So to answer your question about why I am supportive of a for profit, I am more bullish on this project than I would be if this was a research team inside MIT Broad Institute or Caltech etc operating as a charity.

@BTE I was not suggesting that it need be non-profit.
Just that the applicants requested a "grant to individuals" rather than a SAFE investment, which you said is preferred by FTXFF.

@GeorgeVii Also how does one "open" a design? I know how it works in software. I am just trying to understand if there is any reason for them to be pursuing patents.

Buying in not because this is a fantastic project, but I do think that 26% is sleeping on it a bit. There are some very valid cost-effectiveness questions that others have pointed out here that keep me from ranking this project super high, I wouldn't buy much of this above 60% or so. But there's a couple perspectives that I think are worth considering here.

Firstly, I'm not sure how the FTX fund sees itself within the broader philanthropic space, but they say on their principles page "We’re especially excited about launching and supporting ambitious practical ventures, whether nonprofit or for-profit." If Clearer Thinking comes back to them with a portfolio mostly consisting of research and lobbying projects (like the majority of these proposals are), I don't think they'd be happy with it. Research matters, but they're not a research fund. They expressly want practical ventures, and this is one of the relatively few options available. Its not best-in-class, but its category alone is a huge benefit.

Secondly, it feels like practical vs. research projects are judged on different metrics here. Research is judged on its downstream effects, like future projects or improvements it inspires. Practical ventures like this seem to be judged more on their immediate effect, like reducing the cost of clean drinking water. Immediate effects have much smaller error bars, you know what to expect from this project as others have explained. Downstream effects on the other hand have huge error bars, which then allows for more arguments for unlikely but technically possible positive outcomes, much to the benefit of those projects.

I think a more fair system would be to judge separately the immediate effects and downstream effects for each project. Research and lobbying have basically no immediate effects (writing words and talking to people does not directly do anything), but do have potential downstream effects. Practical projects like this have immediate effects like getting people water purifiers, and downstream effects from the learnings of the team executing it. A paper published by this team detailing the most common practical issues that they run into while setting these up and distributing them would be far more valuable research than many of the other projects proposed here.

Maybe that means the grant should require specific research end points or a publishing requirement or something to that effect. But I do think it should be evaluated with criteria similar to other project types.

@GregJustice Thank you for this discussion. I appreciated your comments on practical v research projects, and the difference in error bars for projects with immediate effects compared to downstream effects.

Please note that this account bought some shares in this market in error. Once this error was noticed, we then sold them all. This account has a policy of not betting in its own markets.

There’s a saying that “shipping is bearish”

If you ask for a $500k personal payment for “lobbying” no one can prove that it will accomplish zero. Same for much of this “we will research” and the like

But the moment a concrete plan is proposed people jump in to say “there’s a knockoff UV thermos that probably doesn’t work” so this isn’t viable.

—/

Very valid points are made about whether they should be buying and testing existing products or whether this isn’t more applicable to people without access to reliable electricity (ie inefficient wood burning just to have clean water); but is a striking example of the skepticism to anyone doing anything in the real world, while money is shoveled on “we will write a report that has no impact”

@Gigacasting idk this isn't kickstarter; a cost-effectiveness analysis, even a really basic one, gives us something to work with, especially given that they'll know the details on the ground much better.
I personally would love more projects that are building tangible things.

Ofc i have more thoughts than just "there's an Alibaba knockoff", will perhaps writeup later.

For now. On brief inspection it seems like many of those living in Kampala “slums” get their water from wells such as this.

My first guess is that it'd be much more cost effective and maintainable to sterilize at the well level rather than every household having their own system.

"whether they should be buying and testing existing products or whether this isn’t more applicable to people without access to reliable electricity"
Also seems likely

I hope projects can reply and I can update positively if they have good reasoning for their various strategic decisions.

@GeorgeVii Yeah, my initial though was "Why not just use bleach" which is also extremely cheap and requires no maintainance.

@SebastianWorms Indeed or just attach a readily available swimming pool uvc treatment system to the end of the pipes (given reasonably low flow rates you could probs get pretty cheap ones) and it’ll serve the whole village instead of a couple families.

Apparently chlorine is mostly good just on the larger scale due to exponential rather than linear (with uv) economies of scale. Tho I doubt if much cheaper uv at low capacity that the graph suggests holds up quite so well for non-plant environments.

@GeorgeVii Chlorine doesn't need electricity though, seems much easier to implement. Poor Economics had a chapter on chlorine dispensers near spring, I think the expected cost was 0.30 dollar/family/month. From the google doc, they are expecting their latest version to cost almost 50 USD when built at scale.

@GeorgeVii While some residents obtain water from springs, the vast majority of people in Kampala obtain their water from the city system (National Water & Sewage Corp.). As discussed in this thread, chlorine is effective and inexpensive, and is used by NWSC at their central treatment plants. However, service to customers is intermittent and a chlorine residual is not always maintained, resulting in a risk of microbiological contamination at the point-of-use (whether a neighborhood tap or the faucet in a home). This is true in Kampala, although their utility performs better than many. Chlorine could be used for disinfection at the point-of-use and in fact, you can purchase pre-measured chlorine tablets to put in your 20 liter jerry cans. They have been made available for many years in many areas of the developing world. However, adoption has been low. Most people are uncomfortable with putting a chemical in their drinking water or they don't like the taste/odor or they find waiting the required 30 minutes to be too inconvenient.

@PaulBerg "chlorine residual is not always maintained, resulting in a risk of microbiological contamination at the point-of-use"

Has anyone quantified this risk that you know? Or are there news stories you could point to of mass water-borne infection? etc 



Am I correct in understanding that the situation on the ground is that most Kampala residents boil their water before drinking? What do they currently use for boiling, a kettle? (electricity, gas, charcoal?)

@GeorgeVii The work by Emily Kumpel and her collaborators has documented the microbial risks from intermittent service in municipal water supplies. (Kumpel & Nelson, Mechanisms Affecting Water Quality in an Intermittent Piped Water Supply, Environmental Science & Technology; Kumpel & Nelson, Comparing Water Quality in an Intermittent and Continuous Piped Water Supply, Water Research.)

While living in Kampala in 2009-2010, I measured the chlorine residual at our apartment and over the course of about one month's measurements, found no chlorine residual on several occasions. Maintaining a chlorine residual and a pressurized delivery system are the two measures used worldwide to protect the microbiological quality of water during delivery in city water systems.

Many waterborne disease outbreaks have occurred in city systems. In my 2015 evaluation of the city water system serving Freetown, Sierra Leone, we documented nine cholera outbreaks in the city from 1970 to 2012. (Sierra Leone Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Sector Situation Assessment, prepared for USACE in Association with the US Millennium Challenge Corporation, by CH2M HILL, 2015.) A National Library of Medicine publication in 2010 documented over 800 waterborne disease outbreaks in US water systems from 1971 to 2006. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2901654/

As to point-of-use water treatment practices in Kampala, I don't have specific data on the proportion of people boiling their drinking water versus using other (or no) treatment methods. Anecdotally, from my discussions with Kampala residents in 2010 and then again during a visit in 2021, my understanding is that boiling is the most commonly used methodology. When people have electricity, it is common for them to use an electric kettle although they may also use a charcoal stove for times when the power is off. Those without electricity boil their water using a charcoal stove all the time. The prevalence of boiling worldwide has been documented in published articles, such as by Rosa & Clasen, Estimating the Scope of Household Water Treatment in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2010.

@PaulBerg Thanks. If you have any numbers in the thousands or millions I might be less pessimistic on the projects chances of getting funded.

While I know there are major concerns around clean water in many areas of the world https://ourworldindata.org/water-access
I am less certain that focusing on municipal water supply is a good strategy in having the largest impact here (I realize that perhaps the companies strategy is to produce at scale by selling to city-folk first then focus on other regions afterwards. the trade-offs, and risk of just not making it that far. vs simply providing UVC equipment that serve a few hundred ppl per installation in rural areas. I struggle to see the former as particularly likely hence EV vs the later seems much much lower)
Sry for my poor ability to form coherent sentences haha.

@GeorgeVii I'm enjoying the discussion and thanks for the comments and questions.

I actually believe the opposite is true, that the greatest (and growing) need and greatest potential impact for our product is in cities. Kofi Annan mentioned the urbanization of poverty in a speech in 2001. I have seen this first-hand.

For example, I was in Bujumbura, Burundi, in June of this year. I was helping to evaluate domestic water needs for expanding the campus of Hope Africa University in the city. Microbiological testing demonstrated the concern--several positive results for bacteria. (Not that I recommended the water box for this case. Being a campus with a single connection to city water, the recommended solution was point-of-entry treatment using either UV or chlorine.)

Villages certainly have their water challenges but more often than not, these can be addressed with a drilled well. (That's not to minimize the extent of rural needs, or the challenges with addressing maintenance for hand pumps or general hygiene issues, etc.) However, it is increasingly in cities where people face the greatest safe drinking water challenges. The rapidly growing cities in the developing world have not kept pace in expanding and improving their water systems. It is very, very difficult to install pipelines and storage tanks after development has occurred, let alone expand central supply and treatment facilities. The result is intermittent service, and intermittent service jeopardizes the microbiological quality of water at the customer's tap. Hence the need for household water treatment. It would be wonderful if cities could reliably deliver safe drinking water to their customers. But don't hold your breath. That's going to be a long way down the road.