 Dr. Greg Allgood, PhD
Director, Children’s Safe Drinking Water PŪR® Purifier of Water, Procter & Gamble Cincinnati, Ohio
Greg Allgood is a rare individual. He has risked his career, his personal safety and his health to champion a brand. He has dodged bulletins, witnessed cholera epidemics and been praised by kings. And he has shown Procter & Gable that not-for-profit advocacy can contribute greatly to a for-profit business. Allgood, who certainly lives up to his name, has been instrumental to the development of the PŪR® Purifier of Water. According to the World Health Organization, 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, which is a key contributor to the deaths of 2.2 million children per year.
The extraordinary significance of PŪR® hit home for Allgood on an early trip to Kenya. Clean water sources are scarce in the rural areas, so people dig shallow troughs to find some water for their cattle, their goats and their children. Allgood showed a local woman how a sachet of PŪR® could quickly enable filthy, disease-ridden water to become clean enough to safely drink. While talking with the woman, her now valuable bucket of purified water was stolen. The woman got down on her knees in the mud and begged Allgood for another packet.
Allgood’s journey with PŪR® started 7 years ago in Guatemala with the Center for Disease Control. Although created mainly as a humanitarian gesture, P&G believed the product could certainly be a profitable one.
However, the company found it did not have the infrastruture necessary to distribute the packets to the areas of the world most in need. They estimated that the cost to build the infrastructure would require they reach 50% of their target population within 6 months to make a return on investment. It was impossible. P&G decided to kill the brand. However, Allgood found a solution that Procter & Gamble would eventually accept: turn the brand into a not-for-profit project. P&G now works with a diverse group of partners — ranging from Care to UNICEF to USAID — to provide families in developing countries with access to clean drinking water. To date, the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program (CSDW) has been able to produce more than 500 million liters of clean drinking water for children and their families in 23 developing nations by using PŪR® to kill viruses, destroy parasites and remove dirt and pollutants.
The PŪR® project has also helped Procter & Gamble in many ways, while also inspiring employees. More P&G brands are now entering new markets as a direct result of the effectiveness and goodwill associated with PŪR®, and the company’s African business is profitable and growing. PŪR® also affects how the company thinks of other brands. Contact: allgood.gs@pg.com
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