LifeStraw: Thirsty? Suck it up.
by Celine Ruben-Salama, New York, NY 
on 10.12.06
Think your tap water is icky? Think again. If you’ve got drinkable running water at home you’re better off than billions of other people – and we do mean that literally. In many parts of the world the daily routine of the “lucky” involves walking several miles to fetch clean drinking water, for others, there is none no matter how far you go. It’s estimated that half of the world's poor suffer from waterborne diseases. A shocking 6,000 people die daily from consuming unsafe water.
To combat this situation the Danish company Vestergaard Frandsen has created a clever portable water filtration system called the LifeStraw. Designed to be worn around the neck, this life-saving accessory scores big time points for functionality, transforming any old muddy puddle into a refreshing sip of water. Best of all, it requires no training to use and lasts for roughly a year (if used by a single person) without any maintenance what so ever.
The device contains a filtration system that puts your Brita Filter to shame. Its three-stage, hydrogen-based iodine impregnated resin and carbon filtration system filters out 99.99 percent of parasites and bacteria. Heavy metals and viruses can slip through the filter and it is not recommended for tourists.
LifeStraw was recently on display at Wired NextFest in New York in the Future of Health pavilion. To date, a mere 100,000 have been handed out, 70,000 to earthquake victims in Kashmir last year. Some additional field-testing is required before the $3 gadget becomes an agent in improving world health however. Already its been getting some good press.
We applaud this effort inspired by the “ambitious” Millenium Development Goal of ‘reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water’ by the year 2015. Our only question is how do you recycle the LifeStraw after its done its 1 year tour of duty? :: LifeStraw
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This has appeared on various blogs over the past year. I can see its potential benefit in emergency situations, but each straw lasts only a couple of months.
Unless we want to keep buying these things over and over (burying a pile of old ones in a landfill somewhere) we need to also focus on long term solutions to clean drinking water.
"lasts only a couple of months"
Even if these $3 straws last only a couple of months (instead of the year they claim), isn't that a very small price to pay to keep people alive and disease-free? We should do a crack-down on McDonalds free plastic toys way before we consider the footprint of these straws..
Amen to the above comment
When I first saw this on Treehugger in 2005 [http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/08/life_straw_all.php], the claim was $2 for a year's use. Now it's $3 for, possibly, a couple of months?
Late last year I contacted Thomas Soerensen, Vestergaard Frandsen's Regional Director, to work out a sponsorship deal for my cross-country cycling trip (no money for me: pledged donations per mile would buy Lifestraws, setting up an "X-miles pedaled=clean water for X number of people thing), but nothing came of it.
Great concept, but what's the deal, here? Does it work as advertised? And what of the 100,000 people who are being used to "field test" it? Is it less effective, or even ineffective, at the end of its possibly questionable lifespan? If so, are people using it in unsafe water sources after it has become ineffective?
My point about the short lifespan of the straws is two-fold. Yes, the straws work, but they're really an admission of failure. Poor people don't have reliable sources of clean drinking water, and no one is going to help them get it. So they and their families are have to sip water through a straw for the next several years, and hope that the expiration date hasn't passed.
Second, who's going to pay for these things? The family living on a dollar a day? How would the cost of providing lifestraws for a village of 10,000 people for five years compare to putting in a better community water supply?
So I'll repeat, these are only a short-term emergency solution.
I agree with Viridian.
The life straw is a good tool for short-term emergency relief situations but not a long term solution.
The only real long term solution is to cut back military spending and put it towards the people with education and health infrastructure. Until such time, people will only look for these short term solutions... since they seem cheap up front, even if they are a hundred times more expensive than permanent solutions.
Peace
Casey
Of course the lifestraw is a short term solution, but when people are dying of thirst and water-borne diseases, you need something quick.
Must not stop there, though..
Their website shows over £3 per straw not $2-3.
This thing looks awesome at first glance but there's some problems I see:
* Kids are messy. If you give them one of these, the drinking end will become unsanitary within a day and then what are they going to wash it with?
* How is this going to give your infant water?
* Desperate people will depend on this; when its year goes by will they just discard their only source of water?
* In a land where water is scarce and people make $1 per day if anything, will you be killed for the lifestraw proudly dangling from your neck?
I can see this for emergency situations but for a village in 3rd Worldia, a well designed community filtration system would be a better choice IMHO.
i am going to hold a fundraiser and raise as much money as i can