Well, I do read a lot of ‘crap’ in a day, and I’m still not sure wither I like this idea.. mainly because I am a two sides of everything kinda gal.

However, the researchers at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University has created a device which instantly cleans up to one litre of water on site.  Yes, from river water to clean drinking water in one step.  The magic behind this device is a ‘tea bag’ like contraption you place in the head of a special water bottle. You fill the bottle up with whatever water, and as it passes through the ‘tea bag filter’ from the bottle into your mouth, the two components destroy ‘all things unsafe’.

The tea bag itself is created by using nanoscale fibres, which filter harmful contaminants, and the bag is filled with small pieces of carbon which kill bacteria. 

Now the cost of this water cleaning tea bag is a half cent, which might sound like less than the amount we lose from our pockets and change purses each day, but to the people who would actually NEED these, it’s a small fortune.

Immediately, I envisioned landfills overflowing with contaminated tea bags.. However as I read the article, I found that was already answered for me.  The nanoscale fibres are bio-degradable and the carbon essentially returns to the earth from where it came. (Not that that is always a happy marriage – ie/ oil isn’t very good on the surface of the water.. only in deep dark holes).

So here we have a small, low cost, fairly easy to produce, low eco footprint solution to either a portage trip (make your water on site), or a small solution to help reduce the amount of water borne bacteria infections and illnesses that are plaguing under privileged countries world wide.

Thoughts anyone?

Check out the original article complete with the researchers video here

By Melissa