The cost of granular activated carbon for water treatment has tripled in the last few months. There are all kinds of speculation as to why but in fact, there are a few reasons. These price increases currently affect automatic backwashing carbon filter systems and will no doubt start showing up soon in the manufactured cartridge filters.

Up until a couple of years ago, the vast majority of activated carbon coming into the U.S. was manufactured in China. For various reasons, the U.S. government wisely assessed and enforced import fees on this popular filter media. Water Value was already incorporating U.S. made carbon media in its systems all along, but when the Chinese media was no longer practical to purchase due to the increased cost, the other water treatment companies were forced to buy U.S. carbon. Because their prices went up and ours did not, we even went so far as to upgrade our carbon media to a nationally known name brand manufacturer in place of the generic U.S. media we were using.

We are still using that name brand carbon in our automatic filters, but the cost has risen above what anyone in the business had anticipated. A great deal of this can be attributed to the cost of oil for sure. While oil is not directly used in the manufacture and processing of activated carbon, producing the heat required is. It will either come from electrical or gas energy.

Rest assured that any of the activated carbon systems/products you purchase from Water Value have, and always will contain the highest grade of media available and it’s certainly made in the U.S.A.