ECOsmarte blog

Staff person Jeffrey Shannon spoke with Scott Johnson, an ECOsmarte Director, earlier this week about the company’s involvement with local Food Banks.

Q: What is ECOsmarte’s corporate philosophy on giving?
A: Obviously, our company was founded with a very eco-friendly ethos, but we have also always believed that we need to do whatever we can to help those in need. In our early years the demands of starting a business placed fairly strict limits on our monetary contributions. As we have grown, we have attempted to make more concrete and consistent contributions. We have attempted to remain faithful to this approach even though the recent recession has impacted us and many other small and medium-sized businesses.

Q: What are some examples of putting your philosophy into practice?
A: ECOsmarte has a history of community involvement, with Books for Africa and Healing Haiti being two recent examples of our financial support. With Books for Africa, we supported a program to send volunteer teachers and professors to Africa to organize recycled textbooks. For Healing Haiti, ECOsmarte purchased a water truck in 2008 to be used for both daily and emergency water deliveries.

Q: Why Food Banks:
A: We are conscious that we live and work in a global community and targeted our initial efforts at specific acute needs in developing countries. We thought it was time to help people in our own country hit hard by our recent economic downturn. We believe that the Food Banks provide a very real opportunity to get a targeted, maximum bang-per-buck for our contributions this year.

Q: How will ECOsmarte’s involvement work?
A: We will identify 5 Food Banks from across the country as beneficiaries of monthly contributions over a 6 month period.

Q: How will specific Food Banks be chosen?
A: We will look to our loyal customer base for recommendations. We realize that they are best able to judge the needs and capabilities of their own community organizations.

Q: How will you evaluate your efforts?
A: To be honest, we know that given the large number of people in need that any contributions will help. Again, we look at the feedback from customers with first-hand knowledge as well as from the Food Banks and their clients.

I just got off of the phone with our people on the ground in Haiti. The orphanage is not damaged and our ECOsmarte donated (and logoed )water truck is saving lives by delivering water after the hurricane disaster!

If you can earmark donations to the fuel and maintenance of both of their trucks at www.buya.org it will give you the same goose bump reaction I had to this news after watching the CNN video last weekend. Faith based American volunteers are driving the vehicle.

I once again wish to thank the ECOsmarte customers, salespeople, resellers and stockholder who made the truck donation possible.

Larry Couture CEO

There was an offer that flew by as a comment on this blog the other day. I think it deserves front page billing:

ECOsmarte is helping to fund an emergency relief effort through buya.org and Healing Haiti to bring water to Haitians who desperately need it. This was detailed in a previous post.

So listen up, everyone:
Larry Couture, our CEO, is offering a Free ECOsmarte lite commercial municipal or well water system to anyone will commit to $500 per month/ $6000 annually to help with the maintenance and repairs of the water trucks. ECOsmarte has future plans for a desalination system for ocean water that will be a more sustainable, long-term solution. For now, though, the water delivery trucks are all these folks have.

The retail value of this generous offer, in case you are wondering, is $7K - $8K. So if you have been craving one of our incomparable water systems, practice philanthropy and could use a write-off - this offer is tailor made for you. (Offer good in North America and Western Europe.)

Email him directly here.
And Thank You.

ECOsmarte and our philanthropically inclined customers welcome any charitable ideas involving water, people, sustainable development and planet health. Let's all work together to make this world a better, healthier place. Philanthropy is desperately needed, and it feels good to give.

Here's a sampling of what ECOsmarte and our customers have been up to lately...

A warm welcome to all of you who have discovered ECOsmarte's new blog. Why are we here? Because our passion is water. We are here to create a forum to discuss and explore the fascinating world of water, how it affects our health and our planet.