Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen started to think how he could put the family company to good use for the people of Africa. The result was LifeStraw, a cheap, portable personal water purifier, cited by Forbes Magazine in 2006 as “one of the 10 things that will change the way we live”.
Made of polystyrene, the 31cm long, 2.9cm diameter, 150g tube, which looks like a flute and can be hung around the neck, uses filters to kill or remove 99.9 percent of waterborne bacteria and 98.7 percent of waterborne viruses, and requires no electricity or spare parts during its year-long lifetime, powered by sucking alone. It costs about US$4 and has a purification volume of 700 litres. The product contains a special halogenated resin that kills bacteria and viruses on contact.
