AguaClara LLC Honored As ‘Best For The World', Creating Most Overall Positive Social And Environmental Impact

Recently, AguaClara was recognized for creating the most positive overall social and environmental impact by the nonprofit B Lab with the release of the fourth annual ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list. The ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list honors businesses that earned an overall score in the top 10% of more than 1,200 Certified B Corporations from over 120 industries on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company's impact on its workers, community, and the environment. Honorees were recognized among micro, small, and mid-sized businesses around the globe.

The B Corp ‘Best for the World List’ sets the gold standard for high impact companies and demonstrates any type of company can use business as a force for good. It has inspired the Best for NYC campaign, the first municipal public-private impact partnership in the world to support businesses to create more high quality jobs and improve the quality of life in local neighborhoods, all while strengthening their bottom-line.

AguaClara is an engineering firm that works with governments, NGOs and development organizations to design simple, affordable water treatment plants that run completely off the grid. They achieved this by adapting conventional plants to work without any form of automation, and building at elevations that allow gravity to drive water through the entire treatment train. The technology was first developed at Cornell University in 2005, in response to the proliferation of water pipelines in mountainous Honduras that lacked any accompanying system to ensure the water was safe enough to drink.

"There's been a dramatic expansion in access to 'improved water sources' throughout the world over the past 20 years, which on the surface seems fantastic," says Chuck Brown, AguaClara's Director of planning and development, "but what we've seen time and again in international development is that you can't solve a complex problem with just one or two tools in your kit. So we're bringing a new tool into play: one that makes sure the communities that now have access to water aren't getting sicker because of it."

AguaClara has now built 10 full-scale water treatment plants in Honduras, serving over 52,000 rural, low-income residents. The company is also carrying out two pilot projects in India, testing out the smallest plants it has ever designed -- each one serves a village of about 500 people. Brown hopes that by designing plants that are made from all locally-available materials, run without electricity, and can be operated by anyone with the equivalent of a sixth-grade education, AguaClara has developed the most sustainable water treatment infrastructure in the world.

Additional 2015 Best For the World Honorees include Echale a Tu Casa, a social housing production company in Mexico, Oliberte, a Canadian premium leather goods company that sustainably sources its materials from and manufactures in Africa to create pathways out of poverty and California’s Beneficial State Bank,an innovative, triple-bottom line, community development financial institution and provider of the B Corp Credit Card. The 120 ‘Best for the World’ companies come from 49 different industries such as manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and finance. 37% of honorees are based outside the US, with companies operating in emerging markets such as Afghanistan, The Republic of Korea, and Brazil. (Full list at bestfortheworld.bcorporation.net)

“Today's honorees inspire all companies to compete not only to be best in the world, but best for the world. We hope many will take the first step by using the B Impact Assessment to measure and manage their impact with as much rigor as their profit,” said Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder of B Lab, the nonprofit organization that certifies B Corporations and governs the independent third party standard used to generate the comparable assessment of corporate impact.

B Lab simultaneously released separate lists recognizing the companies ‘Best for the Environment’ (environmental impact), ‘Best for Community’ (community impact), and ‘Best for Workers’ (employee impact) which can be found at bestfortheworld.bcorporation.net. A total of 350 companies were named 2015 Best For the World Honorees, including King Arthur Flour, Natura, d.light designs, New Belgium Brewery and Cooperative Home Care Associates. The 2015 Best for the World Honorees represent nearly one-third of all B Corps, displaying a wide range of excellence throughout the community.

Each honored company is a Certified B Corporation. These companies use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems and have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today there are over 1,200 Certified B Corporations, across 121 industries and 38 countries, unified by one common goal: to redefine success in business. Any company can measure and manage social and environmental performance at bimpactassessment.net.

About AguaClara LLC
AguaClara is a social enterprise that offers the design services, training, and technical assistance to implement the first fully non-electric water treatment plants in the world. Its vision is of a world with universal access to safe water on tap.

AguaClara works with its partners, clients, and the communities it serves to implement its award-winning technology (Tech Awards '11, Katerva Awards '13) throughout the world. Its mission is to promote global health by designing and disseminating water treatment solutions that are socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable. It does this by providing the services that enable its partners to implement long-lasting, high-performing technologies. It also has a commitment to being open source—sharing its learnings with others so that everyone can benefit from it.

For more information, visit www.aguaclarallc.com.