PE Pipes Making a Real Difference to People’s Lives around the World

Session 1A
10:30 AM

David Walton, Borouge Pte Ltd

Water and sanitation are still denied to millions of people around the world and with climate change and population growth the situation will undoubtedly get worse. With the world’s population set to rise to 9 billion by 2050 food production will also become critical and only with a step improvement in water efficiency in agriculture will we meet future needs. So can the plastic pipe industry make a difference to these major crises that the world is facing – the answer is yes, by applying the same technologies that we already use extensively in Europe and North America.

In rural India, many villages receive water only for few hours a day and women spend many hours queuing to collect their daily supplies. In the village of Malkapur, Borouge together with a local pipe supplier and installer provided a water supply system serving the 30,000 residents round the clock. In Vietnam, Borouge cooperated with the People’s Committee of Bac Lieu and Holland Water to bring clean water supply to the 40,000 population of Ho Phong and Ga Rai villages.

Following disasters such as major earthquakes the supply of good quality water is often critical to the health and survival of the victims. In May 2008, a major earthquake struck China’s Sichuan province, killing and injuring many people and leaving the survivors without fresh drinking water. Borouge joined partners in providing fresh drinking water for the 10,000 population of one of the resettlement villages. In L’Aquila, Italy, Borealis has taken a similar initiative to provide a water supply to temporary housing for the victims of the earthquake of April 2009.

Water efficiency in agriculture can best be addressed using micro-irrigation systems and Borouge and Borealis have undertaken a number of projects to help promote these systems and to further improve the productivity of such systems.

This paper describes these and other projects in detail, which were carried out under the umbrella of “Water for the World”, demonstrating how PE pipes and the effective knowledge transfer can make a difference to the water crisis that exists around the world.

David Walton*, Peck Tze Kang*, Pushp Raj Singhvi* & Cino Serrao**
*Borouge Pte Ltd & **Borealis Italy