They have a good marketing story -- i guess they will package it as a different product and sell it to tourists travelling to 3rd world countries after flogging it in a TED conference of some sort.
The problem with this lifestraw story is like that of any of the other bazillion feel-good 'life saving products' which have actually had little impact. 1 million lifestraws distributed for free -- what happens after that ? are they going to distribute it periodically ? (how about in a couple of years time ....when all the straws have been lost or consumed ?) I was in a part of Kenya earlier in the year where this thing had supposedly been distributed -- no one had heard of it, i didnt see anyone using it, i did see some posters about it -- maybe i was looking in the wrong places. the other side of the story is the one being promoted via the marketing material -- people using the straw to drink water from a river e.g. http://conbug.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/lifestraw.jpg . No one i know drinks water like that - cattle drink water like that not people. They real story is this : Some women collect discolored water in a (usually filthy) pot, they carry it home - and then either pour it into a (filthy) cup or an unwashed hand and drink it -- and fall sick. Note the various points of contamination -- the only practical way this straw thing will work is if you drink all the water only through the lifestraw. You could use the other "lifefilter" thing - but the water is still going to end up in a contaminated cup or hand. Someone should do a cost comparison of this "lifestraw" vs chlorinating water (which is what i have seen working , and what I do personally if i have to drink filthy water ) -- i think its far cheaper to chlorinate water and safer -- since the effects of chlorination last a long while post treatment. On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > An update: > > https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27straw.html > > Small Fixes > LifeStraw Saves Those Without Access to Clean Drinking Water > By JASCHA HOFFMAN > Published: September 26, 2011 > > More than a billion people don’t have reliable access to clean drinking > water. Boiling kills most germs in water, but requires fuel and doesn’t > remove dirt. In recent years, sand and ceramic filters have become more > common, but these tend to be more expensive and usually don’t catch all > the microbes. > > So many of the poor worldwide simply drink dirty water. As a result, > about 1.5 million children die of diarrhea each year. > > A new generation of cheap and effective water purifiers including Pureit > (made by Unilever) and Swach (made by an Indian company, Tata, with a > novel rice-husk ash filter) can remove nearly all water-borne pathogens > without electricity. > > But LifeStraw, produced by the Swiss company Vestergaard Frandsen, was > designed for the poorest of the poor. The personal version works like a > chunky drinking straw and can filter about 1,000 liters, enough to keep > a person hydrated for a year. The family version — which looks something > like an IV drip that ends in a water cannon — can purify 18,000 liters, > serving a typical family for about three years. > > Until now these filters have mainly been given away through aid groups > aftersuch disasters like the Haitian earthquake and in chronically poor > countries like Mozambique and Myanmar. Nearly a million of the > family-size LifeStraw have been donated in Kenya alone this year. In > exchange, the company will receive carbon credits for reduced emissions > from wood-burning fires often used to boil water. > > The personal LifeStraw entered the market as a consumer product last > week in North America, and a new version of the family purifier will be > sold next year in India. > > Meanwhile, LifeStraw creators are working on something that might be > considered designer water for the poor: a filter that dispenses clean > water fortified with zinc. > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > >
