For Joshua Kao, founder and CEO of LivingWater Systems, the decision to abandon one idea is what led him to develop an innovative system that addresses water scarcity for communities living in informal settlements or refugee camps: a portable, low-cost rainwater catchment unit.

Kao, who had been developing a very different product – horticultural kits for off-grid communities – soon realised that the kits’ plants would never survive without irrigation and that lack of access to clean water supplies was a far bigger problem for the customers he hoped to serve.

In informal settlements, where water infrastructure is often lacking, communities are forced to pay extortionate fees to corrupt gangs with water tankers or to walk long distances to wells whose sources are often contaminated. Kao realised that nature could help. “I thought, why don’t they use their houses to collect rainwater?”

He soon discovered the answer to his question. While in informal settlements, cisterns can be used to collect small amounts of rainwater, capturing the larger volumes that flow down from the roofs of homes or refugee camp tents requires guttering, and traditional systems are too heavy for these types of structures.

Finding a solution became Kao’s goal, and it started with a sketch, a roll of tarpaulin and a tent. His prototype worked. It captured the water, and the weight of the guttering unit did not cause his tent to collapse.

After trying out the prototype in the desert region of Rajasthan, India, interviews with local residents revealed high demand for the system. Many iterations later, Kao and his team developed the rainwater catchment system that is now being used in water stressed areas around the world.

Made from treated nylon, it can be packed inside a box the size of a laptop case and takes one person just 20 minutes to set up.  “The idea of a gutter unit that can be fitted over the top of a tent, as well as its portability – that’s where the novelty lies,” he explains.

LivingWater Systems is addressing many problems. Communities save money and feel more secure when they don’t have to rely on illegal suppliers. They reduce risk of the health problems associated with contaminated water sources. Moreover, since dirty water causes diarrheal diseases such as dysentery, which prevent people from absorbing the protein and nutrients in what they eat, the system contributes to global food security.

Kao understands these links. “Malnutrition is largely a matter of unhygienic water sources,” he says. “So the idea of providing a newfound clean water supply is something that was very exciting to us.”

As any social innovator will tell you, the hard work of building the technology, raising the funding, finding a market and refining the business model means all forms of support are welcome. And for many of the winners of the RELX Environmental Challenge, the award has provided vital support as they work to scale up their solution. For Westlands Work, for example, it even kept the lights on during the Covid pandemic, providing eight months of funding when no other income source was available.

In some cases, the Challenge has acted as a catalyst for better solutions. For example, Green Empowerment – which builds clean water and renewable energy infrastructure for Indigenous and rural communities – prototyped a chlorine management system for the award. The system did not ultimately prove viable, but because it prompted a focus on improved chlorination and water quality treatment and testing, Green Empowerment made improvements to the system design and standards it now uses across its project portfolio.

Meanwhile, the award itself is changing. While its model remains the same, the number of applicants is increasing rapidly, particularly given current constraints on development funding and increased use of AI for the application process. “It means we need to be even more focused on our criteria and streamlined on what we’re looking for,” says Hill.

Another shift is in the growing number of applicants and winners that, rather than developing a single technology, are pursuing business model innovation and developing new types of partnerships that ultimately expand the wider solutions ecosystem.

Broadening the approach, says Hill, is also taking the awards into a new frontier: the world’s oceans. “We’re looking at how we can expand the Challenge to include ocean health and highlight the link between healthy oceans and clean water and sanitation,” she says. “That’s the next stage.”

Perhaps most importantly, the awards remain a means of increasing awareness of the water and sanitation nexus and its link to everything from climate change and biodiversity to global development.

“Without clean water and access to sanitation, it will be impossible to address the rest of the global goals,” says Balisciano. “They’re the pillars for everything.”