Life Water: mineral water to help the world

Reed Paget

Reed's project developed a social business called Life Water which launched a new bottled natural mineral water onto the UK market and gave 100% of the net profits towards addressing local and global water problems.

An UnLtd award enable Reed to start to generate sufficient revenue to cover all costs and to repay any loans and professional services that has been incurred in the development of the idea.

The UK bottled water industry is currently worth ?1.3 billion and is growing at a rate of 10% per annum. Life Water forecasts capturing 1-2% of the UK still water market by the end of year 3 which would enable up to ?2.5 million per year to be available to finance clean water projects in the UK and abroad in the future.

Reed has received a ?65,000 grant from a foundation in the USA to develop his project and has negotiated over ?100,000 of support from a branding agency, advertising agency and a legal firm. All the companies have agreed to assist with the proposal now and defer payment to when the business starts generating a profit. In addition Reed has recruited a number of leading industry experts as executives of the company and is in negotiation with water bottling plants.

This is a truly unique project and has the potential to have a significant impact on both raising awareness of global water issues and funding local and international projects.

Reed became interested in environmental and political issues from an early age and after leaving university in the States embarked on a two and a half year trip around the world filming in what Reed describes as 'America's Warzones' and looking at both the political and environmental impact on local people. This took him to 12 conflict areas and on his return to the USA he began to edit the film that he had taken.

Over the next 5 years Reed developed the film into a documentary called Amerikan Passport which won the best documentary film at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999, which is one of the world's leading independent film festivals.

During this time Reed also established his own import / export business which helped him fund the development of the film documentary. This led him on to working with the United Nations on the UN Global Compact which aims to advance responsible corporate citizenship so that business can be part of the solution to the challenges of globalisation.

Reed has also worked for a number of television companies and was also involved in developing merchandise for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign.

Life Water was founded in January 2002 with 2 partners to balance the best in business and marketing with humanitarian and environmental concerns.

Things have now progressed, and you can view the current state of the water project here: Belu.org

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