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Lifestraw--the cigar-sized personal point-of-use water filtration device produced by Vestergaard Frandsen--has captured the imagination of everyone who's seen it, and now it has a Family System counterpart that provides 15,000 liters of clean drinking water to one household. What's more, core-fave Project H Design, an organization founded by Emily Pilloton that supports, inspires, and delivers humanitarian and life improving product design solutions, has set up an initiative to fund 100 Lifestraw Family systems for a slum community in Mumbai. For $25 you can sponsor one system, which will be delivered this summer directly to the Mumbai community by Project H.
With more than a billion people lacking access to safe drinking water, and five million people dying of water-related disease every year, here's an opportunity to make a small but very real difference.
The project is a joint venture with Berkeley-based Haath Mein Sehat (Health In Hand) Mumbai, who will be on-site in Mumbai this summer to conduct testing, user acceptance interviews, follow up visits with families receiving the Lifestraw systems.
More about Lifestraw:
The Lifestraw Family system is an amazing point-of-use water filtration device designed and manufactured by Vestergaard Frandsen. It does not require electricity or batteries, making it ideal for use in both rural and urban contexts in the developing world. It eliminates 99.9% of waterborne disease bacteria, parasites, and viruses, bringing clean drinking water quickly and reliably, and preventing life-threatening disease from spreading through unclean water. One system effectively filters 15,000 liters (about a 2 year's supply) of drinkable water.
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Comments
Looks a lot more complicated than it needs to be... I think it might be useful where the contaminants aren't biological. There's something called SODIS that uses UV light to kill bacteria (has proven highly effective in subsaharan Africa) used here: http://www.thewaterschool.org/ and link to SODIS here: http://www.sodis.ch/ - without the costs of something like the filter. The advantage of SODIS over other methods is that it doesn't change the taste of the water (one of the reasons other than lack of fuel that people don't boil their water) but vastly improves the quality.
Dear Allan, thank you for the article about the Lifestraw Family filter. My name is Daniel Frauchiger and I'm responsible for the product performance evaluation at Vestergaard Frandsen. I would just like to add some complementary information on the performance of the filter. It eliminates 99.9% of the waterborne disease parasites (LOG 3 reduction), 99.99% of waterborne disease viruses (LOG 4 reduction) and 99.9999% of waterborne disease bacteria (LOG 6 reduction). Congratulations and best wishes for the Mumbai Project H design initiative!