Water Unite

2 Nov

MLC VOYAGER | Created by Water Unite

Water Unite catalyses new funding streams from the private sector creating a world where everyone has access to clean, safe water; decent sanitation; and lives free from plastic waste pollution. Our innovative program invites bottled water retailers in a collective impact effort to commit funding through a one-cent micro-levy per litre sold.

Website

622,231 Lives Impacted

Water Unite Impact will address the funding gap in parts of the finance landscape for the water, sanitation and plastics recycling sectors not met through charitable foundations, microfinance institutions, commercial banks and/or formal capital markets.

Key impact areas:

Systems strengthening: Improve operational efficiency, transparency and coordination among water, sanitation and plastics recycling service providers, government and the private sector.
Circular economy: Encourage the use of materials to reduce pollution and ultimately limit greenhouse gas emissions and other by-products of industrial processes that are harmful to the environment. We invest in improving plastics recycling services in the locations where it's needed most.
Community resilience: Withstanding impact of airborne and waterborne pandemics. Our approach provides an opportunity for the private sector to unite with governments to provide sustainable water and sanitation services for the most marginalised communities.

The Innovation

Water Unite contributes to an ecosystem of actors in the water, sanitation, and waste management sectors by introducing a new, previously untapped source of funding. As we scale our operations, we build toward ensuring the organization is not merely a pass-through for funds but truly adds value in our project selection, design, management, monitoring and evaluation and adaptation through lessons learned. To that end, Water Unite has already become an active player at SIWI World Water Week, the University of North Carolina Water and Health Conference, as well as the Impact Investing Summit. As funding scales, we can offer a more diverse array of funding options, co-create more innovative projects, and hone our capability to improve the lives of those most vulnerable to water, sanitation, and waste management issues.

Water Unite focuses on developing an innovative financing model and bringing new resources to bear for critically underfunded solutions, especially innovative ideas that may struggle to find funding through traditional channels.

Using new revenue stream, Water Unite identifies and funds suitable operational partners with a demonstrated track record of success in creating impact among vulnerable, underserved communities.

We complement other revenue streams implementing partners may have by our ability to offer a mix of grant funding, low-interest long-term loans, and loan guarantee funds to shift projects from small scale to eligibility for conventional funding options.

About Water Unite

Water Unite is an innovative new non-profit aiming to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for water & sanitation and plastic waste management and recycling through micro-contribution on products and services. The oceans and water courses are awash with plastic and 800 million people live without access to clean water and over 2 billion live without adequate sanitation. Backed by the Rockefeller, Stone, Osprey, Vitol and One Foundations, we collectively strive to create global change through the voluntary application of this micro-contribution, leveraged by finance from within the sector. Innovative. Catalytic. Non-duplicative. Water Unite secured its first partner in 2017 in the form of the Co-Operative Group in the UK and we're working hard to secure the entire grocery and food service sector as part of their commitments to the SDGs.