He Grew Up Without Reliable Water—Now He’s Turning Wastewater Into Drinking Water
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, around the world, access to clean water is something many take for granted, but for Manny Singh, it was a problem he experienced firsthand growing up in India, where water shortages were a daily reality.
Now, as president of Koch Membrane Systems, Singh is helping develop technologies that can turn wastewater into safe, usable water—addressing one of the world’s most urgent challenges. From improving water systems in drought-stricken regions to making treatment more efficient and accessible, his work is helping communities around the globe secure reliable sources of clean water.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.2 | And we continue with our American stories, and it's time for our Opportunity America series, |
| 0:20.0 | sponsored by Coke Industries. |
| 0:22.3 | More than 67,000 people across America are employed by Coke, |
| 0:26.2 | and there's a good chance that their work intersects with your own story in some way. |
| 0:31.3 | Learn more about Coke's incredible work at Coke Industries.com. |
| 0:35.2 | That's Coke, K-O-C-H- Industries.com. And today, Robbie brings us the story |
| 0:42.6 | of Manny Singh. I was born and brought up in India. Even though I used to live in one of the |
| 0:51.4 | more advanced cities in India, still there were some basic issues, which sometimes can be taken for granted in the US, |
| 0:59.0 | but over there we were taking shower and suddenly the water would run off. |
| 1:02.0 | It's just like a common problem. |
| 1:05.0 | We used to fill buckets of water before they would turn it off |
| 1:08.0 | and have like a six or eight or ten hour gap where |
| 1:11.0 | there was no water available. Normally they would start at maybe eight till about |
| 1:15.3 | 11 in the morning and then it would shut off and then come back in the evening for |
| 1:21.5 | a few hours but that changed so much from week to week and I faced those |
| 1:26.3 | problems as I was growing up and as I, that's in the developed part of India. |
| 1:31.3 | If you go to villages and some other remote areas, it was a lot worse. |
| 1:35.3 | There were no toilets, and people used to travel long distance with their buckets on their head and bring those back. |
| 1:42.3 | Everything was impacted because of water-related problems. |
| 1:46.0 | Even now, 65 to 70% of India's wastewater isn't treated. |
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