“The positive thing about the world getting smaller is that your impact can get bigger.” – how washing machines can give inspiration to solve one of the biggest problems of our time, access to clean drinking water.

Wai On Leung, Managing Director, Waste & Environ-mental Technologies, Hong Kong, P. R. China

“What is one of the largest problems mankind will have in the next century?” Wai on Leung asks us in his futuristic office, constructed completely out of recycled materials. “Water, the access to clean drinking water” – he answers his own question. Currently there are one billion people living on our planet that do not have access to clean drinking water and this incredible number is still increa-sing each year. In addition, the world’s water reserves and their availability are decreasing for everybody.
Wai On Leung, a passionate sailor, ad-venturer and inventor, will not solve this problem on his own. But at least he has contributed to the solution by inventing a system to treat waste water and convert it to drinking water. This system is powered by solar energy – as not to waste other not renewable resources – and is designed for the use in remote regions and affordable for decentralized use in poor areas. Through this design it allows more people to get access to one of the most important basic goods.

Let us give you an impression of what we talked about with Mr. Wai On Leung in the following lines. You might be able to read more about him and his fantastic inventions in our book “MyImpact”.

Wai On Leung’s selected quotations:
“Waste water treatment systems are usually quite costly. If you are setting up a new business, you would typically have to run it for a while to afford a treatment with the money earned. Our machines should allow for waste treatment from the beginning. ”

“Access to drinking water is the base for a healthy life and disease avoidance. One of our machines treats waste water to be used for drinking with the help of solar energy. It kind of washes the water, like a washing machine. I believe this is an important innovation.”

“Sometimes you don’t know why you do things. It’s like jumping on the Greenpeace ship as a youngster – you just do it and feel happy.”

“It’s good to see that you do not need to interfere with others through power; you can do it through knowledge.”

“The positive thing about the world getting smaller is that your impact can get bigger. In the last few months I was discussing possible expansions of our company in many more countries. There is a huge interest in our products.”

“At the moment we are not profitable. But that’s not the main point; we will keep innovating and finding solutions.”

“In a sense the world is going back to the “real” things, like air and water.”

“I claim myself to be a green corporation and all my em-ployees are green ambassadors. You have to believe what you do.”

Some background on Wai On Leung:
Wai On Leung was born and went to school in Hong Kong. At the age of 19, during his shipyard apprenticeship, he took the chance to join the Greenpeace yacht “Fri” in 1976 for a few weeks, on a trip to Singapore. That was his first true contact with envi-ronmentalists and since that time Wai On Leung always wanted to contribute posi-tively to improve the situation of the environment. After a few more adventures, one in Australia and others in different places in Asia, Mr. Leung settled in Hong Kong again and founded Waste & Environmental Technologies to implement all the ideas he developed during his different working experiences.

Some background on Waste & Environmental Technologies:
Waste & Environmental Technologies’ (WET) vision is to explore, pioneer and innovate in environmental technologies, which people can benefit for a better quality of life and a sustainable development. To achieve its goal, WET focuses on Appropriate Technologies which should be
• Simple to apply
• Not capital intensive
• Not energy intensive (requiring little non-renewable energy to do, build, or maintain)
• Use local resources and labor, and
• Nurture the environment and human health
Waste & Environmental Technologies’ current machines are preferably for recycling plastics and for waste management. One of its most successful products is called WetSep. WetSep treats waste water from factories and construction sites, cleaning it before it’s flushed into rivers and oceans.
In 2003 WET invented an advanced model of WetSep inte-grating a third processing stage. After being spun and fil-tered, water is heated to 85 degrees Celsius in a vacuum-type solar heater that destroy lingering traces of bacteria and renter the water drinkable. This solar-powered ma-chine can be used in remote areas to improve the quality of drinking water significantly.

If you would like to engage with the work of Wai On Leung or get to know more about Waste & Environmental Technologies please visit www.wastetech.com.hk,
or for more specific possibilities contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch