LifeStraw - Best Consumer Product EVER

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to present to you the best consumer product ever, the Life Straw®, a brand new product for sterilising water at the point of use, ie. as you drink it. Now on a day to day basis in Australia this product is not going to be much use to you, but that is only because we are lucky enough to have access to safe, clean drinking water. We've got so much of the stuff that we use it to flush our toilets, wash our bodies and some people even water their gardens with the stuff! However, 43% of the other humans on this planet do not have this luxury, in fact a good proportion of those are reduced to gathering water from polluted rivers and streams and stagnant wells, then sterilising it by very basic means. A common method is to boil the water over a fire, which is not only time consuming but also wastes valuable timber supplies and pollutes the atmosphere.
   Lack of access to safe drinking water is such a huge problem that nearly 1.5million children die of diarrhoeal diseases every year, which is more than malaria, measles and AIDS combined. These deaths are easily preventable as household water-quality interventions in rural areas in the developing world have been shown to reduce childhood morbidity by 40%. So implementing the life straw on a large scale would save thousands of lives every year. How will it do this? By filtering out and killing 99.9% of bacteria, viruses and protozoan parasites, which is better that all other types of water filtration and even boiling.
  Added to this the Life Straw provides an effective method of sterilisation at the point of use, a lot a filtration devices work on a much larger scale and re-contamination can occur again post filtration, during transport and storage of the water. The life straw filters the water as you suck through the straw, guaranteeing that the water you are drinking is clean, filtered water.
  The Life Straw was designed to have no moving parts or replaceable spare parts and I see this as a great design feature as it lowers the production cost drastically, plus users won't be tempted to take it apart in to try and prolong its lifespan. The fact that it requires no electricity to to function also suits the places where it will be most in demand. In fact so little energy is required to use it that even a baby can create enough suction to use the straw. 
For me, the final reason for why this is the best product is the value for money, each Life Straw unit will sell for $2US and will filter 700litres in its lifetime, which is the annual water consumption per person.
 It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing design, but this is definitely a product where function trumps form. Sacrifices must be made somewhere in order to keep the costs down.

Sam F

http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw/lifestraw