Three cool solutions to the clean water problem
By Sophie Westover, Global Envision, October 26, 2015
You probably don’t have to think twice about clean water. It’s as close as a faucet, as dependable as spring rain.
But, right now, 783 million people lack access to clean and safe water.
Providing clean, safe water across the globe is a huge undertaking, with a price tag that ranges from $10 billion to $175 billion. But several solutions--from drinking straws to a “drinkable” book--are showing that technology doesn’t have to be massive to make a difference.
One-in-nine people don’t have clean water, and that means disease, death, and a drain on already-struggling economies.
Half of all hospital beds worldwide are filled with people with easily preventable, water-related diseases, like diarrhea and cholera. These diseases kill 3.4 million people a year and claim the life of a child every minute.
Finding water is a time-consuming, grueling task that falls mostly to women and children. Some 140 million hours each day--hours not spent on income-generating activities--are taken up by collecting water.
Children lose 443 million days of school to water-related diseases, missing precious days when they could be learning the skills needed to lift them out of poverty. In addition to that distressing statistic, half of the schools in the developing world lack adequate water and sanitation facilities.
Safe water is a valuable investment. Each dollar invested in water and sanitation produces $3 to $34 in returns of increased productivity. Finding solutions to the water crisis, no matter how big or small, are critical to saving lives and ending poverty.
Among the many large and humble water treatment programs, three small water purification devices are making clean and safe water more attainable.
LifeStraw. This water purifier, designed by the Swiss company Vestergaard Fradsen, is simple to use: Just put one end of the nine-inch straw in unfiltered water and suck in clean water. The straw filters out contaminants using hollow fiber technology; no chemicals are involved.
So far, 877,505 filters have been distributed, reaching more than 4 million people.
SONO Water Filters. This simple, cost effective, and locally produced filtration device cleans deadly arsenic contamination from groundwater in Bangladesh, the result of “tube wells” installed by well-meaning aid organizations in the 1970s. The wells draw water from aquifers contaminated with arsenic and expose 35 million to 77 million people to arsenic poisoning, which causes skin lesions, cancer, and death.
The SONO Filter is a large bucket filled with iron, sand, gravel, and charcoal that filters out arsenic and other toxic chemicals and bacteria.
The simple design costs only $35 and can filter 100 liters (26 gallons) a day for up to 14 years. UNICEF and other aid organizations have distributed about 225,000 free SONO filters throughout Bangladesh, Nepal, and India.
The Drinkable Book. The “book” is a water filter and instruction manual for how and why to clean drinking water. It’s made of a new type of paper, created by scientists from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Virginia, that costs only pennies to produce. The paper is coated with silver nanoparticles that attract bacteria and toxins when water flows through it, leaving the water 99.9 percent pure. Not only does each book provide clean water for one person for three years, but it also serves as an instruction manual for healthy sanitation practices.
When it comes to a worldwide crisis like clean water, even small gains make a difference.