A straw to adore

(Source: desatascos.es)

Straws have received a pretty bad press recently, but one straw is changing the lives for millions of people and has been doing so for several years. LifeStraw is an idea that is almost as old as I am but fully took off in 2005 when it went from a straw that was able to filter out Guniea worm disease (and lead to the disease being almost completely eradicated) to a straw that could filter out almost all of the microbial contaminants in water which make it dangerous to drink along with heavy metals.

For anyone who's sat through an ad break on TV in the last million years knows of the horrible facts about unsafe water, like:

• 844 million people don't have clean water 
• ‎Every minute a baby dies from unsafe drinking water
• More people die each year from drinking contaminated water than from any form of violence including war

The negative facts go on and on but the positives are rarely promoted and for once, it's plastic to the rescue!

Using a 2 micron mesh (25x smaller than the width of a human hair) the straw traps 99.9% of parasites and bacteria that produce cholera, dyssentry and typhoid.

(Source: eartheasy) 

This straw is far from single-use as it has a lifetime of several years being effective at filtering 4000l of water, and gravity powered versions (right) have helped provide safe water to countries after natural disasters including Haiti, Pakistan and Ecuador.

Check out the video below to see it in use and visit their website to learn more!