LifeStraw water purifier grows into family size
LifeStraw began when a young Danish graduate, whose family owned a small
textile company, took a trip in the 1990s around Africa, where contaminated
water claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Mikkel Vestergaard
Frandsen started to think how he could put the family company to good use
for the people of Africa. The result was LifeStraw, a cheap, portable
personal water purifier, cited by Forbes Magazine in 2006 as “one of the 10
things that will change the way we live”.
Made of polystyrene, the 31cm long, 2.9cm diametre, 150g tube, which looks
like a flute and can be hung around the neck, uses filters to kill or remove
99.9 percent of waterborne bacteria and 98.7 percent of waterborne viruses,
and requires no electricity or spare parts during its year-long lifetime,
powered by sucking alone. It costs about US$4 and has a purification volume
of 700l. The product contains a special halogenated resin that kills
bacteria and viruses on contact.
Now the Vestergaard Frandsen Group will start rolling out a stationary
LifeStraw Family version that will provide clean drinking water for up to 18
months.
It is estimated that 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water
and that 1.8 million die annually from preventable water-borne diseases such
as diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid and e-coli.
There are 200,000 LifeStraw units in use in dozens of countries in Africa,
the Middle East and Asia today, purchased and distributed by partner groups
such as the Red Cross, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International
and IMA World Health, a Protestant Christian organisation, according to
Cleary.
Contact information |
© IRIN. All rights reserved
(email: http://www.irinnews.org) |
---|---|
News type | Inbrief |
File link |
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76548 |
Source of information | © IRIN. All rights reserved |
Keyword(s) | http://www.lifestraw.com/ |
Subject(s) | CHARACTERISTICAL PARAMETERS OF WATERS AND SLUDGES , DRINKING WATER AND SANITATION : COMMON PROCESSES OF PURIFICATION AND TREATMENT , SANITATION -STRICT PURIFICATION PROCESSES |
Geographical coverage | International, Sweden |
News date | 04/02/2008 |
Working language(s) | ENGLISH |