A Sunshine Coast entrepreneur has received international recognition after becoming the first Australian to win a global award at the King’s Trust Awards in London.
The recognition was awarded to Shannon Lemanski, who runs Aqua Ubique in Birtinya with his wife Danni, for developing technology that produces drinking water from air.
The system is being used to help supply safe water to remote Queensland communities while also reducing reliance on plastic bottles.
Mr Lemanski, 35, was presented with The King’s Trust Global Sustainability Award by his “all-time favourite actor” Benedict Cumberbatch, and spent time chatting with King Charles at the star-studded awards ceremony held recently at Royal Albert Hall.
A former Australian Army logistics officer, Mr Lemanski described the event and award as “surreal”.
“King Charles knew a lot about our business and was super supportive of the work we’re doing through our Drop4Drop” Program, which provides less fortunate Australians with reliable access to safe drinking water,” he said.
“Benedict is my acting hero, and to have him present the award was incredible.
“He’s an awesome dude who was genuinely interested in what we’re doing and said to keep in contact.”
On leaving the army – where he’d witnessed the problems caused by unsafe water in PNG – Mr Lemanski was handed a pamphlet about the national charity founded by the-then Prince of Wales, inspiring veterans and their families into entrepreneurship roles.
He enrolled in the trust’s Enterprise Accelerator program which helped turn his innovative idea into a viable business and attract his first customer.
Incredibly, Mr Lemanski said meeting King Charles and Benedict Cumberbatch paled against the satisfaction he’s deriving from the Drop4Drop Program, which is allowing communities to access the previously “unaffordable” atmospheric water generation (AWG) technology.
Under their business model, Mr and Ms Lemanski, who also won last year’s Biosphere Business of the Year at the Sunshine Coast Biosphere Community Awards, are supplying one free unit to remote or regional First Nations communities for every five commercial units being leased.
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Aqua Ubique has already installed nine machines in Cherbourg, in the south Burnett; in the state school, day care, aged care centre and town hall, with plans to expand into Wujal Wujal and Doomadgee.
With about half of their units being leased in the Sunshine Coast region, Mr Lemanski called for more local businesses to get behind the Drop4Drop initiative, to ensure more water ends up “where it’s needed most”.
“In some communities, bottled water costs more than soft drinks, which forces parents into impossible decisions – send their babies to daycare with formula made with unsafe tap water, or with soft drink in their baby bottle,” he said.
“An absolute highlight was seeing a four-year-old girl at Cherbourg, who was the same age as my own daughter, able to pour her own glass of clean water and then drink it. It was pure joy and life-changing.”
