!http://www.lifestraw.com/en/low/imgs/pic03.gif!
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this invention on the blog before, but I first heard about it a few years ago and was very impressed. It is called the Life Straw and it’s the grand prize winner at the Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas, along with much-lauded runner up “One Laptop Per Child”:http://laptop.org/. The idea of the Life Straw is that it uses a cheap halogen-based resin to filter out 99.9 percent of bacteria and 98.7 percent of viruses providing a VERY cheap way to filter water anywhere. Because the places dealing with water problems are typically not the kind of places with large infrastructures or abundant resources, the Life Straw really helps most where the problems are at their worst. It’s an incredible idea and I for one want to add my voice to singing it’s praises. Who knows, it may just change the world.
For more about the Life Straw, the science behind it, and the promise it holds, visit the official site “here”:http://www.lifestraw.com/. You could also learn about it like I did through environmental uber-blog: “TreeHugger.com”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/lifestraw_world_changing.php.