Marking World Water Day: Avolta spotlights key partnership with Made Blue Foundation
Avolta, through its partnership with Made Blue Foundation, provides developing communities access to clean drinking water
Avolta is celebrating World Water Day (March 22) through its ten-year partnership with Netherlands-based water charity, Made Blue Foundation.
The initiative began during the summer of 2014, providing developing communities access to clean drinking water, with a donation for every beverage sold at the company’s operations in Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
Access to clean drinking water has been a human right since 2010, but for one in ten people globally, water scarcity means it still requires a day of work to source. Further, it is estimated that 485,000 people die annually due to water pollution and poor sanitation. To date, through its partnership with Made Blue Foundation, Avolta has donated more than 1.5 billion liters of water to projects in developing countries, granting access to clean drinking water.
Projects have included setting up a new water network for neglected minorities in Vietnam, providing water pumps to ten remote villages in India and setting up water and sanitation at schools in Ethiopia.
Access to clean drinking water has been a human right since 2010, but for one in ten people globally, water scarcity remains a problem
Walter Seib, CEO Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, Avolta, said, “We’re grateful for our longstanding partnership with Made Blue, a Netherlands-based charity that has worked tirelessly over the past decade to improve access to clean water in the places where it’s most needed. As a company with a global footprint, we feel a duty to leverage our operations to support the communities around us. We’re proud to announce that through our donations, we’ve been able to grant 21,356 people access to clean water for at least 10 years.”
Frank van der Tang, Co-Founder Made Blue Foundation, added, “Avolta was one of the first ambassadors after the creation of the Made Blue Foundation and has expressed this in various ways at Schiphol. That was partly the basis of our success and we are very grateful to them for that.”
The partnership aligns with two key focus areas within Avolta’s recently published ESG strategy – Engage Local Communities and Respect Our Planet. The initiative supports communities through the provision of clean water and sanitation, while also reducing the generation of waste. During the decade-long partnership, Avolta and Made Blue have saved 10,913 tons of plastic waste, which would have resulted from disposable water bottles.
Additionally, the collaboration has prevented almost 11,000 tons of carbon emissions and saved 233,853 trees from being cut down for firewood by eliminating the need for remote communities to boil polluted water over open fires.
