Myth-Busting: Myths About Water with Scott Harrison

Jessica Honegger [00:00:03] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Going Scared podcast. This is your host, Jessica Honegger, founder of the world changing brand Noonday Collection. Join me here every week for conversations that encourage you to live a life of purpose by leaving comfort and going scared. We are in our third episode that is all about busting myths that we might have in our lives. And today's guest, Scott Harrison, is going to do some myth busting for us around ideas that we might hold around water. That's right, water. After a decade of indulging his darkest vices as a nightclub promoter, Scott declared spiritual, moral and emotional bankruptcy. He then spent two years on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia. He saw the effects of dirty water firsthand and came back to New York City on a mission. Upon returning to New York City in 2006, having seen the effects of dirty water firsthand, he turned his full attention to the global water crisis and the then 1.1 billion people living without access to clean water. He established a small, poor team in a tiny Manhattan apartment and created what you probably already know about is charity:water. It was such a treasure to have Scott on the show because, as you know, Noonday collection works in so many of these same emerging economies where charity:water is present. And we have seen firsthand how clean water can be an obstacle to human flourishing. Speaking of Noonday Collection, don't forget, we want to be your one stop ethical shop this season for anything that you might want for your holiday needs, whether you are teacher shopping, husband shopping, girlfriend shopping, hostess gift needing, holiday decorating shopping. We have it all. In August, we announced that we welcomed a new addition to Noonday Collection as we merged with Seiko Designs. We are now fully a one stop ethical shop under the Noonday collection brand. We would love for you to host an event by gathering people in your home with a Noonday Collection ambassador or if you have a holiday market or a holiday event, maybe at your church. Reach out to a new day collection, Ambassador. I know that she would love to come and help all of your people take care of their gift giving needs. Just head on over to NoonDayCollection.com. Find an ambassador in your local community or reach out to an ambassador that you might already know. Or you can always shop online at noondaycollection.com. Back to Scott. He was recognized in Fortune magazine's 40 under 40 list, the Forbes magazine Impact 30 list. And it was recently number ten in Fast Company's 100 most creative people in business issue. We have such a fascinating conversation, and I'm sure you're going to learn all sorts of things about water that you didn't know before. Okay. So little known fact about me that my listeners don't know which lends to the context of our conversation today. I grew up around water and waste management.

Scott Harrison [00:03:26] Oh, no way.

Jessica Honegger [00:03:27] Yes, I did. My dad owned and operated small community water systems. And in addition to that, he had a grease and grit trap business where they would take effluent from grease and grit, de-water it through a waste management system. And the water then would go into a creek because it was basically potable at that point. So he turned grease and grit waste into potable water.

Scott Harrison [00:03:54] No way. Okay, that's cool.

Jessica Honegger [00:03:57] So I got a little more background than your typical.

Scott Harrison [00:04:00] And most people don't even know what that word means.

Jessica Honegger [00:04:02] Okay, well, I have to admit, I called my dad before the interview and I go, Dad, I'm going to break down what you did. And he said, I turned effluent. I'm like, I don't know what that.

Scott Harrison [00:04:11] Is, but you're like, Wait, you think you got rich? You were you were affluent. Yeah, that's funny.

Jessica Honegger [00:04:18] So I grew up going and visiting waste management systems and water treatment plants. And then for, of course, my job with Noonday Collection, I travel all over the world and work in many of the communities where I know charity:water has made a huge impact. And I just got back from Mexico a few days ago. My stomach is doing the thing that it does when I get back from many of these places that I visit. And it always makes it grow. Oh, yes. I mean, my intestines are shot at this point. But I do, it always makes me wonder. America nailed this water situation and we've gotten a lot of things wrong. But our water infrastructure is golden and yet most of the world is not. And I just don't even know how that happened. So can you kind of give us the 101 and then we're going to get into some myths around water?

Scott Harrison [00:05:14] Sure. [00:05:14]Well, you know, as we record this 771 million human beings living on planet Earth right now are drinking dirty water. So about one in ten people alive will drink contaminated, unsafe water today and tomorrow, you know, throughout the weekend. And 82% of those people live in rural areas and 18% live in cities and towns. So we've actually made a lot of progress. I started charity:water 15 years ago. So, you know, over the last decade and a half, we've taken as a sector, you know, the number down from a billion people without water to 770 million. You know, so it's still two Americas full of people, you know, a massive problem. But most of the progress was made in those cities and towns. And it's really now the rural people who have been left behind and the much harder work now to get that number eventually down to zero. [63.9s]

Jessica Honegger [00:06:19] So how do you define safe drinking water? Because I'm surprised hearing you say that 15%, just because in cities like Delhi that I go to or even Mexico City, I'm still not drinking water out of the tap.

Scott Harrison [00:06:32] Yeah. [00:06:33]So to have access to clean water, you know, it needs to, you know, be free of fecal matter. It needs to be, you know, test clean. And there's myriad ways of testing water around the world. And here's another interesting one. It's got to be within a 30 minute walk round trip from your house. So you're counted in the, you know, six and a half billion. If you're a woman in Ethiopia who's walking 15 minutes to a well and then 15 minutes home with your clean water. So this is not even counting tap water, water running from a tap. If we said, you know, hey, how many people actually don't have piped water inside their home? It'd be in the billions. [45.9s]

Jessica Honegger [00:07:20] Okay. So we're making this distinction, which this is now just becoming clear to me between access to any water at all versus.

Scott Harrison [00:07:29] No, you know, clean, clean water, water that would test clean within 30 minutes of your house and 771 million people don't have that. So that's the lowest rung of, you know, of development, right? If we could get the 771 million people water that doesn't make them sick within a 30 minute walk round trip of their home, then that would be a zero. But then we'd want to go up the next ladder and say, well, okay, well, you know, that's that wouldn't be good enough for any of us. Right. Right. We want piped water. We want sanitation. You know, we want a shower or a way to wash our hands in the home and not walking towards it. So I guess just, you know, all that to say the problem is so much more massive than most people can even comprehend, because we live in a world where, you know, most of us take water for granted. You know, a team member who went to the field in the first time he ever experienced the water crisis in Africa. He comes home and he lives in a modern three bedroom, you know, maybe a 1500 square foot home. And he starts counting the taps in his three bedroom home. And he counted 17 places where clean water came out in his very modest home. You know, we probably know people that have 200 taps in their, you know, their grand homes. And, you know, 770 million people don't have one. They don't even have clean water that they could walk to within 30 minutes.

Jessica Honegger [00:09:03] And this feels like it's too difficult to solve. Like, in my mind, I'm like, well, don't you need to work with entire government structures to create all of new infrastructures? And how do you. So tell us break down that myth for us that it's difficult to get clean water to those in need.

Scott Harrison [00:09:21] Yeah. I mean, that's one of the most exciting things. It's a completely solvable problem. So we know how to get every human being alive access to clean water. There's not a single person where we are scratching our heads saying we just don't know how to help them. Now, that's actually not true with so many other problems in the world. My mom died very quickly of stage four pancreatic cancer. The doctors and surgeons had absolutely no idea how to help her. We don't know how to cure Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or ALS. Right. We're spending billions of dollars researching drugs and different treatments. The beauty is water is just not like that. You know, we know how to solve it. Now, we haven't created the will, the global will to take care of the 10% of the world without water. We haven't put together the resources, the funding to do that. But we do know how to do it and we know how to do it right. So, you know, we now have 14 different technologies across all 29 country portfolios. I'll talk about three. In Cambodia, we run the largest bio sand filter program in the world. Think of this as a giant Brita type filter that's used for an entire family, except instead of made out of plastic, you know that you buy at the Publix or the Whole Foods. It's made out of a cement casing, clean sand, gravel and rock. And you pour the dirty water through this bio sand filter, which costs about $65 to construct in Southeast Asia. And the filter will take out 99.9% of all the contaminants in the water. $65 for a family of, let's say, four or five. So very, very cost effective. We've now drilled over 80,000 wells that cost about $10,000. And you'd go into a community, let's say, in Ethiopia, where there are 300 people living there. They might be walking 4or 5 hours, depending on the time of the year, dry season versus rainy season, and they maybe walking to a faraway swamp or a pond or a river. Now, the terrible irony is that this community of 300 people is living on top of a massive aquifer of clean water. The only problem is it's 20 stories beneath their village. So imagine taking an elevator to, you know, -20 underground. And that's where the water is. What's needed to drill a well in that case is about $1,000,000 of drilling equipment, huge machinery. You know, we've all seen these in cities and in rural areas. We spent COVID on a farm in Pennsylvania. We had two wells drilled on our property. All of the water comes from the wells, you know, the holes in the ground on the farm. So it's the same concept and it costs about $10,000 to drill that well and give 300 people access to clean water. In Madagascar, in Senegal, we're doing multi-million dollar solar systems where we'll drill a really deep well. We'll put in a solar field that powers a submersible pump to lift the water up to giant water towers at the tops of hills. And then using gravity, we pipe it down to a network of a dozen villages. So, you know, a lot of different things. I mean, from fog nets in Nepal to rainwater harvesting systems in the Thar desert in Rajasthan, India, you know, there's always a solution. It's really about finding the appropriate technology that is cost effective and sustainable for that community's needs. Mm hmm. And, you know, the thing we do in America is we just drill a lot of wells. So most of our water here in America comes from, you know, if you if you're living rurally, you're just drilling a well and it costs about $15,000. So it's actually cheaper to drill a well in Africa than it is in New York State or in Des Moines. Yeah.

Jessica Honegger [00:13:40] We have a family ranch and we drill too. We have a water well right there. And then here in Austin, our water comes from a huge lake and river. I guess it's a river source. But again, I mean, we don't even think about the source of where I how I brushed my teeth this morning. You know, that. Now, I definitely think about I am grateful just because I've gotten so sick so many times, you know, when I do travel. So I want to ask you that. I think there can be this idea, this myth that dirty water is not as big of a problem as other problems in the developing world. And I know even at Noonday, we're all about creating sustainable economic opportunities for people and in these areas of the world. Why water?

Scott Harrison [00:14:25] Yeah. Okay. So, you know, a couple of things. [00:14:29]It deeply impacts health. And, you know, maybe this is not a surprise to people, but if you're drinking water with disease in it, if you're drinking contaminated water, it makes you sick. And in fact, dirty water is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Mm hmm. In some of the countries where we work, up to half of the disease in the country is simply because people are drinking bad water. Half of the hospital beds in the country filled with people sick from water. It also kills kids. So it's one of the top three causes of death of children under the age of five. [41.9s]

Jessica Honegger [00:15:11] And is there immediately is this dysentery or just dysentery?

Scott Harrison [00:15:14] Yeah. They're dying of diarrhea, okay? They're dying of diarrhea. And a fragile child's immune system when they move from breast milk to water, can't handle dirty water. Right. And a child will get diarrhea. Well, how do you. I've got two young kids, you know, lots of diarrhea. Growing up. The way that we cure our kids of diarrhea is by hydrating them. You know, sometimes we go down to the Duane Reade and by, like, you know, the purple Pedialyte stuff. Right. Which is electrolytes and hydration. Well, if the dirty water made you sick in the first place, and that's all that a mother has to give to her child, she literally watches her child die of dehydration in her arms as they're simply not able to keep water in their body. They're not able to cure that diarrhea. Trachoma comes from water. They're actually 18 waterborne diseases that can all be tracked back to the source of unsafe water. So let's just talk about health as one. [00:16:15]Number two is, is the impact of water on education. One out of three schools around the world don't have clean water at the school. Hmm. I mean, imagine sending your children to a school not only with no water, but also no toilets. Right. And this is a huge issue for teenage girls. They'll stay home for four or five days every month. A teenage girl is ashamed to go to a school with no water, with no sanitation or toilet facilities, and often the girls fall behind in their studies. The burden of collecting water. You know, I've now been to 70 countries around the world. I have never seen men get water. The cultural burden, whether I'm in Central or South America or Africa or India or Southeast Asia, the burden of collecting the water falls on the women and the girls. Mm hmm. So there's a huge impact on girls education when it comes to water. [57.2s] Mm hmm. And then I think, you know, the third thing just that that really struck me was the amount of time wasted getting water is astonishing. [00:17:25]When I when I started charity:water, the stat at the time that was well documented was 40 billion hours are wasted just by women in Africa every single year collecting water. And this is not even water that's helpful. If 40 billion hours, just for a comparison that is more than the entire economy, the global economy of the country, of France. Every single person working in France over the course of a year does not add up to the wasted time. Of the women in Africa alone just getting water. And, you know, you're talking about 65 million people in France. And so when we're able to drill a well, build a water solution close to someone's home, you're freeing up all of this time. And, you know, there's a lot of economic studies that have been done now by the United Nations and other agencies that actually quantify that. They find every dollar invested in water and sanitation makes the community 4 to 8 times richer. They found in some situations a 20 X economic return just by bringing clean water. And it's things like money not spent on medicine, money not spent taking your kid to the health clinic, which could be two or three weeks worth of wages just for the one way taxi to get them there. You know, it's that free time turned into productive work. [94.5s] A woman selling up, you know, setting up a stall at the market and selling rice or selling peanuts or making bricks able to earn extra money for her family, money for school uniforms, money to pay for school fees. So, you know, again, if you if you just if we removed water from our lives, it would be our lives would be so radically different, you know, if we didn't wake up and, you know, brush our teeth and take a long shower and, you know, turn on the coffee machine or grab a bottled water on the way to the gym. You know, this is just all those things are completely foreign to, you know, 10% of the world simply because of the conditions they were born into. Mm hmm.

Jessica Honegger [00:19:42] I wanted to ask you, I mean, you have been at this you said 15 years now. And, of course, from the from the outside, you have faced incredibly what I would say, quick growing success. And yet you still I mean, hearing you today, I mean, you were you are on a mission and you're a huge visionary. And I have a feeling you think I haven't asked you this, but you probably think you've barely scratched the surface.

Scott Harrison [00:20:04] Right. We've helped 15 million people out of 771 million. So that's 1/50 of the work. Not enough? Yeah. Not enough.

Jessica Honegger [00:20:14] You're not satisfied? Not there yet.

Scott Harrison [00:20:17] Not there. Not in the least bit.

Jessica Honegger [00:20:19] But tell me some of what what's giving you hope to believe in such an audacious goal?

Scott Harrison [00:20:27] Well, [00:20:28]I think because of the progress that has been made, you know, more than a million donors have now joined charity: water. You know, million everyday people from 150 countries have just rejected the apathy that I guess could be so easy to accept when it comes to any paralyzing global issue. Right. It'd be easy to say, well, what can I do about the water crisis? And a million people have done something. They've given over $700 million now, which is allowed us to help 111,000 villages around the world and 15 million people. So I think the momentum has grown every single year. You know, last year was the first year where we raised $100 million in donations. Well, that was enough to move 2 million people from dirty water to clean water. And, you know, we want to do so much more. But, you know, that's 50 Madison Square Gardens full of people. Mm hmm. Actually, it's 100 Madison Square Gardens full of people. [61.6s] Just last year, you know, it's 100 Staples Centers full of people who no longer drink dirty water because every day people around the world cared and were generous and gave.

Jessica Honegger [00:21:43] Is that that hundred million doesn't include grants. That's all donors.

Scott Harrison [00:21:47] It's individuals. Yeah. [00:21:49]Charity:water. We don't take government money. We do very, very little with foundations. It's really individual donors stepping up to be generous and say, hey, look, you know, I can I can solve this. We also have a unique business model at charity: water, where from day one, 100% of all donations go directly to build these water projects, which we then prove back to the donors sending them satellite images. Every single project is proved on Google Maps and Google Earth so people can see exactly where the money's going. And then in a in a separately audited bank account, about 130 families pay all that overhead. So all the unsexy office costs and flights and staff salaries and toner for the apps and copy machine. That's all covered by 130 families who don't mind paying those costs. [53.9s] So that millions...

Jessica Honegger [00:22:44] Somebody has got to pay it.

Scott Harrison [00:22:46] Yeah. So that millions of people can give in the purest way. And, you know, we'll. Have an eight year old girl go out and sell, you know, $67.21 of lemonade. And being able to tell her all $67.21 is going directly to help people get water. And then here's proof of where that money went has really allowed us to scale the organization.

Jessica Honegger [00:23:07] So how do you continue to scale? Because there is something about momentum that happens at the beginning of an organization's life. And then there's kind of the hard work of keeping that momentum going. And it's just incredible. I didn't realize 100 million from individual donors. How are you continuing to get the word out? What sort of your vision on how to get more people involved in this work of giving towards clean water?

Scott Harrison [00:23:38] Well, one of the things that has been powering the growth, so we've actually you know, I think we've grown 14 out of 15 years. We had one year. The growth has really been coming through small donations monthly. And we have this community called the Spring. And, you know, this isn't a radically new idea in the space, but, you know, we said, look, we know the average person has 11 subscriptions right now, Spotify or Netflix or Disney Plus or Hulu, Amazon Prime for free shipping, you know, maybe your newspaper or your, you know, your magazines. So we wanted to create a giving community of people that would show up every single month for clean water, giving what they could, and they wouldn't get free shipping. They wouldn't get music or movies, but we would tell them every single month where their money was going and the you know, the impact those gifts were having. [00:24:34]And we could always promise that 100%, whether they were able to give $40 a month, which is, believe it or not, all it cost to give one human being clean water across our entire portfolio. $40 gets somebody access to clean water. So there's people that do that every month. And then there's kids that do $10 a month and every four months they get someone clean water. So that has actually been where the growth of charity: water has been coming from. You know, 70 plus thousand people now across 149 countries. And people give about an average of a $30 a month. Which allows us to, you know, scale the work in and now hire thousands of people, local partners across these 29 countries to actually go out there and implement these projects. So, you know, just to give you a sense, you know, we have about 70,000 monthly givers in the Spring. [54.0s] Spotify has over 180 million people. Netflix has close to 200 million. So, you know, that's as I think of momentum or possibility. Yeah. I mean, surely, Jessica, we should be able to get a million people to show up for clean water every single month knowing we can promise them all their money will go and we can show them where the money goes. Well, if we did that, we'd be helping a million people every single month instead of just 2 million people a year. And then when we get to a million, you know, could we get to 10 million? So I think, you know, there's it really feels like we've scratched the surface of what's possible. Now, we don't have the marketing budget of a Netflix, right? We're not making billions of dollars of films. We don't have the marketing budget, but of an Apple or a Spotify who can take billboards out in airports and TV ads. But I believe, you know, these things grow organically as passionate people get involved, are inspired seeing where their money goes and then invite their friends.

Jessica Honegger [00:26:33] Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And I think to really understand how the domino effect that clean water can have on the flourishing of a community, and then on the opposite, the lack of clean water. You know, I think you broke it out so well to help us understand, you know, that it's a root cause of so many other issues that prevent a community from flourishing. I'm curious, do you think you're going to see clean water to all of these? What I think. Did you say almost 800 million people in your lifetime?

Scott Harrison [00:27:03] I really hope so. I really hope so. There's a lot more energy now and certainly awareness about this issue than there was when I started 15 years ago. I mean, when I started charity: water, people would look at me like huh? water? Like, you know, what are you talking about? And I think, you know, look, we've had some of our own challenges with water. Flint, Michigan, here in the United States, Cape Town drying up, you know, cities in India. So I think as we talk more about a changing climate, water becomes something that we realize maybe is a finite resource. It's not a shared resource. And I think the more people understand that and then understand what we can actually do about it, you know, we are not paralyzed by this problem. There are a lot of problems. We just don't know how to solve. We can solve this problem. So I think it's been gaining momentum and gaining energy. And I think the best is yet to come for, you know, this amazing charity: water community of generous people around the world.

Jessica Honegger [00:28:07] Mm hmm. I love it. So at the Going Scared podcast, we believe that courage is not a lack of fearlessness, but it's about being afraid and going anyway. So I wanted to end by asking you, how are you going scared right now?

Scott Harrison [00:28:21] Well, I think the I mean, the numbers that we have put up, the challenge that we have given the team and some of our donors, it may not feel realistic and it may feel like a real stretch. But, you know, I had this interaction, Jessica, where I was asking a really wealthy family for a $10 million gift. And I was terrified. I mean, you know, there was a high level of anxiety. And, you know, this is a family that had been involved with us for many years. Had come to the field, had seen the issue up close and personal. And it was kind of time for, you know, the big ask. Well, I made the ask. And, you know, the gentleman said, you know, thank you so much. Our family reviewed the proposal. I just have one question. Why did you ask for so little? Mm hmm. And they wound up making a $40 million commitment to clean water. So I think sometimes, you know, you have to really. I mean, then I went home, like, what am I asking too little of myself, of the team, you know, of our goals, of our local partners around the world? You know, what does it look like to be bolder, to really step out in faith and try to tackle more of this really important challenge? So this happened recently, and I'm certainly, you know, thinking about it. Wow.

Jessica Honegger [00:29:52] Congratulations. I love hearing that. I'm one of my best friends is the president of International Justice Mission. Melissa Russell is her name. And she comes and speaks annually at our conference. And she always says when she gets nervous to make that big ask, she keeps thinking about the little girl who is still, you know, her body is being sold and how could she ever look that little girl in the eyes and say, I'm sorry, I was scared. I was just scared to ask, you know? And I think of you and just all the people living without clean water. The woman right now on an arduous walk who is missing school, she's probably 13 who should be in school. And instead she's fetching water for her family. That is not even going to be clean. It's probably could very well cause them sickness. And I know that you wouldn't look at her in the eyes and say, I was just too afraid. And I thank you so much for painting this picture for us today. And we definitely want to support charity: water. So tell us how we can go about doing that.

Scott Harrison [00:30:48] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, people can go just to charitywater.org. You could go to thespring.com if you wanted to learn more about that community. We have kind of a video of the charity: water story that's now gotten over 100 million views across platforms. And it's a great way just to see a little more of it. You know, it's one thing to kind of, I don't know, hear about the water crisis. It's another to see it to see some of the water that that people are forced to drink and also to see water shooting out of the ground from a drilling rig as hundreds of people celebrate knowing that their lives will never be the same again. You know, knowing that this day is a defining moment in their family's life, in their communities, life, you know, that water is going to bring health and prosperity and hope to that community. A lot of that is a lot of amazing stories and videos on the website. And of course, yeah, if anybody is able to join The Spring, we we'd love to have you in. And that's really how we think this problem will get solved in the future, you know, 20, 30, $40 at a time. Right.

Jessica Honegger [00:31:51] Well, thank you so much, Scott.

Scott Harrison [00:31:53] Thanks so much for having me and for listening.

Jessica Honegger [00:32:03] Our music for today's show is by my good friend Ellie Holcomb. And I'm Jessica Honegger. Until next time, let's take each other by the hand and keep going scared.