Cow Sh*t to Clean Water

Hey Jeff - you mean another way to remove viruses from water? Well boiling works, but it's not very environmentally friendly. And people in developing countries usually can't afford to wood/fuel to boil their water everyday.

You can also remove it through distillation, ozone treatment, or reverse osmosis I believe. All of those requiring something large scale and expensive like a water treatment plant.

And carburator cleaner might get ride of viruses, but if you add that to water, you probably have other issues to deal with if you drink that :P

HEY uncultured

SO YOU KNOW ANOTHER WAY

pass it on and tell people what you know

this is the way I am talking about

I'll bet you it dies from carburator cleaner

Hey Jeff - UV rays don't kill viruses like cryptosporidium.

Viruses like cryptosporidium have a hard outer shell making it resistant to both iodine and UV ray treatment. However, this nanotech LifeStraw filter does get ride of viruses...

oh yea

watch the science channel

they are showing the world how to do it

Bacteria and ultraviolet rays are what cleans not filters

these people need to figure it out

like las vegas

Thanks whatahassle! :)

I spent a year in Bangladesh and got to see microfinance in action. Microfinance, to me, is really part of (not the entire) solution.

Many people using microfinance would not bother to invest in a mosquito net. Why? Because the future pay-of is only theoretical (i.e. the cost of not getting malaria). The same is true with clean water solutions.

So, it's not at all conflicting that someone can be on a microfinance loan and still receive a free 3-year water filter or a 5-year insecticide treated mosquito net...

You could just save some of the clean filtered water to wash the unit, couldn't you? That doesn't seem like much of a problem.

A pluralism of solutions to these problems is what is needed. Savvy individuals like Mohammed Yunus, nobel laureate and founder of Grameen, who make eliminating poverty financially viable are real heroes! Turning helping people into sound business has an exponential effect because it attracts investment and provides jobs. Charity alone simply is not enough and , as I've said before, making people stakeholders in the solutions to their own problems is a far more valuable long term strategy than simply providing for them.

I'm not saying abandon all skepticism, but if the inventors of this filter and the Hippo Rollers from another pod on a similar topic yesterday were simply out to make a buck, there are a lot of wealthy and equally vulnerable markets they could scam.

We should commend them rather than chastising them from a position of incomplete information.

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Thanks for the post Uncultured! I'm voting UP!

Beautiful !!! I love the good news....hooray for those brave enough to get the ideas out there.....and for those with the hearts to follow through... :)

You'v heard of raw sewage, but never clean or treated sewage. That's because it's claaed tap watter.

The mesh net just needs to be rinsed - it's just meant to catch the dirt large enough that you can see with the naked eye. It's real function is to prevent clogs.

When I was in Kenya I saw lots of household rainwater collection units. But, because the catchment system wasn't perfect, the water was just as milky brown as the river water I scooped up in the video.

I think the normal use for this filter is to purify river and rain water. Of course, rain water has fecal matter in it since it often gets contaminated from adjacent farm land.

This filter comes from the same company that is the #1 global manufacturer of those long lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets that the UN and aid agencies distribute. If anyone can responsibly pull of something like this - it would be those guys...

Thanks for responding. I'm just wondering now what water they would then use to rinse the macro filter out if the only water they have is the dirty water they put into it in the first place. Nothing is perfect I suppose, but I just see dollar signs for those pushing these schemes and not much in the way of actually helping people regarding sanitation in the first place. Rainwater harvesting is actually something I support more.

Hey Janfor, I don't work for the company that makes these filters. But from what I researched, there are three filters: a macro, micro, and nano filter. The macro filter is the one in the top (the white mesh net) - that's supposed to be taken out and rinsed out every couple of days.

There is a flush valve (the red tube at the bottom) that shunts all the waste/bacteria out of the unit. This isn't like a Brita filter - the dirt flushes out.

And I know that this filter removes items down to 25 nanometers and meets US EPA guidelines for a microbiological filter. Here's the test results from a University of Arizona study:

http://tinyurl.com/LifeStrawResults

How often do you clean the filter and what do you do with the excrement from it? Throw it back in the water? And what is the cost? And is there a site that shows the percentage of bacteria removed?