Care for Mekong, care for the environment
We are a community-focused water purifying project in Vietnam. The Mekong Project provides portable drinking water solutions to rural communities along the Mekong River Delta, offering a climate-friendly solution and helping to avoid preventable illnesses in the community. With more than 2.7 million people across 12 provinces, the project provides ISO-certified purifiers to each of the 600,000 households, removing their need to burn firewood to boil water for consumption. This will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and regional deforestation over the course of its lifetime.
The project is registered with Verra, please find our registration here.
18,000,000 tonnes
CO2e emissions avoided over 10 years
900,000
water purifiers distributed to local communities
Our vision for Vietnam
We are offering a carbon neutral solution with considerable environmental and public health benefits. The project will deliver a long-term, secure and simple contribution to sustainable development in Vietnam, enabled and supported through carbon finance. With the potential to avoid over 12 million CO2 emissions over its lifetime by providing an alternative to firewood, the project could also help to protect local ecosystems and wild habitats.
How does it work?
Our ISO-certified purifiers are a low-cost, long-term solution to unclean drinking water. Preventable illnesses from contaminated water are a leading cause of death for children under five in this region. The purifiers use ceramic filters to create clean water that doesn’t have to be boiled, removing 99.999% of bacteria. They can filter between 2-3 litres of water an hour and have a life span of 10 years. The technology provides an affordable, carbon neutral solution and supports UN SDG 6, the human right to safe water and sanitation. Made in Hanoi, the water purifiers are hand delivered and installed in each household by the Vietnam’s Women’s Union.
Our contributions towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)
The project will contribute to the achievement of 7 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. These include, UN SDG 1 No poverty, UN SDG 3 Good health and wellbeing, UN SDG 5 Gender equality, UN SDG 6 Clean water and sanitation, UN SDG 8 Decent work and economic growth, UN SDG 13 Climate action and UN SDG 15 Life on land.
Potential benefits to the local communities
We distribute our purifiers free-of-charge to over 600,000 households in communities along the Mekong River Delta. The communities we serve typically collect water from rivers, open wells or rain and then boil it by burning collected firewood.
In rural Vietnam overall, around 71% of households generate drinking water through boiling, often over inefficient cookstoves in poorly ventilated conditions. This is expensive, produces significant quantities of greenhouse gas and increases risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
By eliminating the need to collect firewood and boil water, our project decreases carbon emissions, household air pollution and deforestation in the region. This aims to improve overall public health and alleviate the work burden of women and children who collect the firewood to burn.
Our project in action
Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong.
Our project in action
Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong. Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong.
Our project in action
Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong.
Our project in action
Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong.
Our project in action
Click through to see a selection of images showing our work in the Mekong.
