Fueling a more sustainable future through WaterTech vending machines
Every morning in Mewat, thousands of children pour into the streets at the break of dawn. These kids harbour aspirations ranging from becoming doctors, engineers, and fashion icons to scientists, unknowingly building the nation’s future with every step that they take towards their schools. But their journey is not that easy, and not always complete. Rising mercury levels, increasing maladies, and the perennial problem of Mewat’s saline groundwater often stands as a hurdle between them and their dreams.
But, this hardly is the case of Mewat alone. Thousands of cities and villages in India have similar concerns. The day is not far when a Cape Town-like ‘Zero Day Crisis’ (absolute water scarcity) starts surfacing in India. Multiple states, including Punjab and Haryana as well as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, have already been dragging each other to court due to water disputes. Recently, residents of Shimla were seen lining up with their vessels due to acute shortage of potable water in the city, ultimately asking tourists – the major source of their livelihood – to avoid visiting the hilly region. But what is really happening?
NITI Aayog’s latest study gives a clearer picture. It points out that India is facing the ‘worst’ water crisis in history. The commission further went on to assert that the demand for water is going to outstrip supply by 2030, if adequate measures are not taken.
Can IoT-based technologies become the ‘adequate measure’ everyone is looking for?
Large-scale IoT-based water purification systems along with sustainable technologies have lately offered a ray of hope in the fight against the imminent water crisis. They are providing people an uninterrupted supply of potable drinking water through energy-efficient systems. Such systems, moreover, leverage a host of technologies that not only give first-hand information about the health of the system and water quality, but also transmit this data to the control center in real time, so that maintenance can be done pre-emptively to avoid service disruption. They have multi-stage UV filtration, giving up to 10,000 liters of clean drinking water per hour. These proprietary RO systems, moreover, have considerably lower water rejection, thereby saving more water in the process.
In Mewat, 40 similar machines were deployed by IoT-based water purification system provider Swajal, which has directly benefited more than 15,000 school-going children in two years. Following this, the entire region registered lower cases of absenteeism and half-day leaves due to health concerns – with such cases reducing by 90 per cent in Mewat Model School itself, where one of the systems was installed. Such low-water rejection systems when coupled with near-field communication can change the future of this nation, by eliminating the imminent water shortage and supporting the budding doctors, engineers, scientists, and fashion icons on their way to school.
