LifeStraw

About half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne diseases, and more than 6,000 people, mainly children, die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water. LifeStraw, a personal mobile water-purification tool is designed to turn any surface water into drinking water. It has proven to be effective against waterborne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and diarrhea, and removes particles as small as fifteen microns.

1. Designer: Torben Vestergaard Frandsen
2. Manufacturer: Vestergaard Frandsen S.A.
3. China and Switzerland, 2005 (current version)
4. High impact polystyrene (outer shell), halogen-based resin, anion exchange resin, and patented activated carbon (interior)
5. Dimensions: 10” h x 1” diameter
6. In use in: Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda