International Trends
Save Water | Give Life: Our Mission and History By Mike Mason
Mike Mason, Weathermatic’s president and chief executive officer, started the Save Water | Give Life program in 2012 to facilitate water conservation and building wells for those without access to clean water. Prompt- ed by the sudden death of his close friend and Regional Sales Manager Matt Piper, Mason committed himself and Weathermatic to the higher purpose of positively impacting lives of people across the globe.
Because Weathermatic has provided water-saving irrigation solutions for decades, they were already acutely aware of the need to conserve precious water resources: the average half-acre commer- cial property wastes over 380,000 gallons of water per year through overwatering. However, nearly 1 billion people world- wide cannot access the 5 to 12 gallons of clean water per day they need for bathing, cooking and hygiene. The water they do get often brims with dangerous diseases and pollutants, so the water for which they travel up to 7 miles just makes them sick. Countless hours of labor and education are lost to fetching water and disease, and lack
of water reinforces poverty, inadequate education, gender inequality and other socioeconomic obstacles.
Mason and Weathermatic realized that the amount of water wasted by a single commercial property is enough to supply 200 families in a developing country. Unable to simply ship the water to them, Mason started the Save Water | Give Life program to help build wells in these developing countries, where one well can provide water for 200 or more families for generations.
How It Works
Because earth’s water supply is limited and will be increasingly so as the population grows and per capita water use soars with development, Weathermatic begins by helping customers conserve water using the SmartLink Cloud-Connected Irrigation Control System. This system decreases water use by an average of 38 percent be- cause it measures environmental variables and only waters when plants require it. The SmartLink connections permit cloud- based control of the system, so real-time maintenance requires less labor and fuel.
36 Irrigation TODAY | October 2016
For each water-saving connection, Weath- ermatic donates to Living Water Interna- tional. LWI builds and repairs wells and provides hygiene education in developing countries across the world.
What We’re Accomplishing
With many thousands of connections being made each year, Weathermatic plans on participating in many well drilling op- portunities. In addition, they are donating a percentage of all sustainability services proceeds to Living Water International. As these proceeds and SmartLink connections increase, the hope is to build even more wells. In October of 2016, Weathermatic will take a team to Nicaragua; this includes a scholarship given to a student at Texas A&M University. On this trip, the company will partner with technical experts from LWI and community members to do the physical work of digging a new well. A hygiene team will also train community members on how to keep germs from spreading. Through these efforts, the hope is to provide clean water to thousands, knowing this clean water will bring with it health, education, economic growth and empowerment.
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