ZENON Teams to Provide Safe Drinking Water for up to 350,000 Tsunami Victims

ZENON Environmental is spearheading the drive to send its Homespring units to provide clean, safe water to victims of the disaster in India and Sri Lanka. In a combined initiative through the assistance of Eureka Forbes, a pioneer and leader in water purification systems in India and World Vision, an international relief and development organization and its partners on the ground, ZENON will initially donate 54 of its Homespring water filtration units to support relief efforts in Asia.

ZENON's Homespring units will be installed in Sri Lanka and India where there is a high and critical need for clean and safe water. These include relief camps, schools and other community locations. Eureka Forbes has taken on the responsibility of servicing and maintaining the units to ensure continued safe drinking water to people in the area. Eureka Forbes is a marketer of the Aquaguard Water Purifier in India with one of the widest sales and service networks across the country.

World Vision will provide its expertise in identifying those areas most in need as well as coordinate the logistics of transporting the units on the ground. For those units that are installed in temporary relief camps, these will be moved to other areas where there is a continued need, such as schools, old age homes, etc. and will not be sold commercially.

The Homespring product is the first whole home water filtration system launched by ZENON's Consumer Product Division. With ZENON's ZeeWeed ultrafiltration membranes at the core of the product, the patented, self-contained Homespring system makes water biologically safe for consumption, without chemicals, by physically removing suspended solids, viruses, parasites and bacteria from the water.

Clean water is critical to the victims' survival at this point. According to the World Health Organization, the average physically active adult consumes approximately four litres (one gallon) of water per day. As each Homespring water filtration unit can potentially produce up to 27,000 litres of water per day (7,000 gallons) depending on water quality, the 54 units being provided by ZENON are capable of providing safe drinking water to over 350,000 people.

"We are committed to helping find water treatment solutions to the relief efforts in the region," said Andrew Benedek, Chairman and CEO of ZENON. "Our participation in this initiative reinforces our positioning to solve real world problems and, as our logo says, provide Water for the World."

"Providing water is an integral part of World Vision's relief efforts," said Marilyn Friedmann, vice president, Donor Development, World Vision Canada. "This partnership with ZENON supports more than World Vision's relief effort, it supports reconstruction and will allow us to make significant inroads with the rehabilitation of municipal water supplies."

In addition to ZENON's efforts with the Homespring water filtration systems, the company's larger water purification systems, which the Canadian Army have trusted for years, will be deployed by Canada's Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART). ZENON continues to seek out initiatives to further assist tsunami and earthquake victims in Asia.

World Vision is an international Christian relief and development organization working in more than 90 countries around the world, providing help to more than 85 million people each year. Additional information is available at www.worldvision.ca.

Source: ZENON Environmental