0 Get purer whisky taste with a water filter

Mavea Elemaris water-filter pitcher

Like a little water with that whisky? Many people, including golden-nosed experts, do. A splash can lift the aroma, breaking up what your chemistry teacher called ester chains and freeing up volatile compounds. But you paid how much for that single malt? Why sully it with chlorinated tap water?

Enter the Mavea. Filter jugs have been around for 40 years, pioneered by the Brita company of Germany. In 2000, Brita sold the brand in North and South America to Clorox. Now the same German firm is launching a fresh competitive assault on the market here with a new-generation pitcher. More stylish than Brita jugs, it reduces all the bad stuff, including chlorine and heavy metals, just like other pitchers.

That makes the water not only cleaner but taste softer, like the Scottish water used to make great whisky. And it features a proprietary filter with a micro screen to reduce black-particle release, an unsightly disadvantage with other filters. Your dram will look as pure as it tastes. Mavea Elemaris pitchers are available in black, white and red and in two sizes, five-glass and nine-glass, $34.99 and $39.99. Sold at Pepper Mill in Toronto and other kitchenware stores across the country.

Beppi Crosariol

www.theglobeandmail.com

0 DOST rolls out locally-developed water filter technology

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the National Housing Authority (NHA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) recently in Muntinlupa City for the pilot testing of a new water filter technology developed by the Industrial Technology Development Institute (ITDI) of DOST.

DOST's locally-developed water purification system consists of a clay ceramic filter coated with nano-colloidal silver, an anti-microbial agent that replaces the chlorination process in traditional water filter systems. PHOTO CREDIT: Jane Tadili

Both parties agreed to collaborate in the field and performance testing of the system on the chosen beneficiaries identified by NHA. ITDI-DOST experts will provide the consultancy and technical assistance to NHA and the beneficiaries during the installation, demonstration and quality monitoring of the system.

Through the project “Production and Performance Testing of Ceramic Pot-typed Water Filter", DOST-ITDI aims to develop an efficient, stable, low cost and easy to use water purification system that can improve the quality of drinking water particularly in areas where access to potable water is difficult.

Addressing the Southville 3 residents in Muntilupa, the first beneficiaries of the water system, DOST Secretary Mario Montejo explained that the project is inline with DOST’s thrust to make local technology works for the people and to provide some solutions to the problems of the country today. “Access to potable water is one of the major development concerns of President Aquino. What we brought here today is a practical solution to that concern. We really hope that we can roll this out to other communities nationwide," Montejo added.

The water purification system (WPS) is a simple technology that consists of a container and filtering medium, which is the ceramic pot filter (CPF). The ceramic filter is made up of red clay which is coated with nano-colloidal silver as the anti-microbial agent that replaces the chlorination process in traditional water filter systems. The ceramic pot typically sits or hangs on the top of a large plastic container, which is fitted with a tap at the bottom. A lid is placed on top of the filter to prevent contamination.

According to ITDI scientists that developed the technology, the system is capable to purify tap water, deep well water, and raw water tainted with up to 3 % suspended particles or silt and convert these into safe drinking water. ITDI experts further said that the water filter has passed the Philippine National Standards (PNS) for drinking water in terms of microbiological and chemical analysis.

ITDI Director Nuna Almanzor said that cost per unit was considered in the development of the water filter. Almanzor said that the ceramic filter is “easy to make, portable, inexpensive, user friendly, and made of local clay that passed the required physical properties of ceramic pot filters". Almanzor added that the project will not just address access to safe potable drinking water but will also provide jobs to pottery makers in the country. She said that DOST is willing to train possible manufacturers of the ceramic filters to provide additional jobs for Filipinos.

While ITDI is waiting for feedbacks from the pilot test for the possible improvement and cutting down of production costs, the agency will fabricate the CPF units to roll out to other NHA identified beneficiaries. ITDI says, at present, the units are easy to install, handle, maintain and reasonably priced.

NHA General Manager, Atty. Chito Cruz, said that NHA is very honored to work with DOST for the project. Cruz said that, apart from electricity, safe and potable drinking water has been a problem to resettlement areas due to its unavailability or contamination. But with the ceramic filter technology, Cruz said that residents will have not just water but purified drinking water at a minimal cost. “It is very laudable for DOST to undertake this project, to make water purifier affordable, potable and portable to our people," said Cruz. — TJD, GMA News

www.gmanetwork.com

0 Water filter plan aims to generate carbon credits

By Francois Ausseill / AFP, KAKAMEGA, KENYA

A man filters water using a LifeStraw device at his house in Shituhumi village in Kenya’s Western Province on May 30.

To protect the environment and improve the health of 4 million people while making a profit is the goal of a Swiss-based company distributing water filters and aiming to sell carbon credits.

Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen’s family firm has invested US$30 million in a program to distribute 900,000 water purifiers in Kenya’s Western Province, which will reduce environmental pollution by avoiding the need to burn wood and boil water.

The technology, given free to local people, is known as the LifeStraw, which is a plastic kit fitted with a filter that eliminates more than 99 percent of bacteria, viruses and parasites in water from wells and streams.

In recent months, with the help of 4,000 Kenyan public health workers, the Danish-run Vestergaard Frandsen company equipped almost 90 percent of the 900,000 households in Western Province, reaching nearly 4.5 million residents.

LESS EMISSIONS

The aim is to ensure that 60 percent of the households affected no longer have any need to boil their water to purify it and thus reduce the carbon gas emissions, earning Vestergaard Frandsen carbon credits to sell.

The scheme depends on a system of collecting information from each worker who installs a LifeStraw and must transmit, over a mobile phone, the name and photo of the recipient, the number of people in the household and the GPS coordinates of the house.

“We’re giving every house a water filter and educating in the use of [it] and the need for drinking safe water,” Vestergaard Frandsen said. “As a result of this, we anticipate that the use of boiling water will go down. When boiling water reduces, less firewood is burnt and that means less CO2 emissions.”

“It’s a massive investment for our company … We obviously need a revenue stream. That revenue comes from the reduced boiling water and the reduced burning of firewood. We actually expect to have a CO2 emission reduction for 2 [million] to 2.5 million tonnes per year, which we’re going to sell on the voluntary carbon credit market,” he added. “We’re a business, and we’ve been very fortunate to build a business around the opportunity to save lives. It’s a full profit enterprise.”

In a village on the outskirts of Kakamega, Vestergaard Frandsen carried out a swift tour of inspection, but while the project has been widely welcomed, unexpected difficulties do arise.

SUSPICIONS

Saouda Rajab, 27, took her courage in both hands to ask whether the filtered water acted as a contraceptive.

“Is it true it is used for family planning?” she asked. “Can you show me what’s inside [the plastic tube]. Old people fear that these wazungu [white people] put something in it to kill us … Those are rumors from the old people.”

Vestergaard Frandsen explained that the rumors are groundless and promised to show the filter without its plastic casing within the next two weeks. He then decided to step up his village-by-village awareness campaigns to keep on hammering the message that the LifeStraw has no such side effects and to allay fears.

The company is playing for high stakes. Its financial success depends on the widespread adoption of the kit by the villagers.

The project must also undergo an independent audit carried out by a firm with the approval of the Gold Standard, a label for trade in carbon credits under which LifeStraw is registered.

MEASURING RESULTS

The audit will “evaluate how much CO2 would have been produced in the absence of the project and then the real emissions will be measured once the project is in place,” said Emmanuel Fages, a carbon market analyst, who accepts that “measuring carbon is not an exact science.”

For his part, Vestergaard Frandsen plans to pursue his work on the ground until the audit is carried out.

“At the end of the year, we will be in a position to measure our 2011 worth in carbon credits, whose market value oscillates between six and 10 euros per tonne,” he said, before adding that he has made an advance deal worth 1.8 million tonnes with the US bank JPMorgan Chase.

www.taipeitimes.com

0 Eco hero: The water filter entrepreneur

By Jessica Salter

Amanda Jones, 27, set up her company, Red Button Design, with her schoolfriend James Brown, a design engineer. The pair appeared on BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den in 2007 to pitch their innovation – a mobile water filter device called Midomo, that can filter 50 litres of dirty water using the power of its wheels, intended for use in Africa – they were offered £50,000 by the dragons. (Following the programme they were offered a £45,000 grant by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, meaning they could turn down the television investors and keep all their business for themselves.) The pair have now spent £300,000 developing the product and the sixth version is in use in communities all over sub-Saharan Africa (midomo.co.uk).

'When I left Glasgow University where I studied psychology and philosophy, I decided that I wanted to work for the UN and I started researching. I came across the Millennium Development Goals [eight international targets agreed by all UN member states, which include eradicating extreme poverty and fighting disease epidemics] and I thought that the thing that affected all of them, from child health and education to combating HIV, was water. Clinics in Africa are clogged full of people suffering from dysentery so doctors can’t treat patients with HIV; girls can’t go to school because they have to spend all day making lots of trips to collect water.

'Everyone knows water is essential to life, but the facts are astounding: 10,000 people die each day because they can’t get to clean water. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease; 443 million school days and more than 40 billion working hours are lost to water collection annually.

'James wanted to design a product that would really stand out for his degree show, so I shared my research and he came up with the Midomo. We were clueless about business at the start – we were only 23 – and had a beautiful naivety that you never get back.

'I applied for Dragons’ Den at three one morning and then forgot about it – like when you do late-night eBay shopping. Then the researchers rang me and invited me for a screen test. I hadn’t even told James. On the way home, when they’d given us the money, I realised we were just two kids in borrowed suits.

www.telegraph.co.uk