THE PROBLEM

  • 780 million people in the world have no access to drinkable water - that is 1 in every 9 people.
  • Each 21 seconds, a child dies due to the ingestion of non-drinkable water. More than chicken pox, malaria and AIDS - combined.
  • 3.4 million people die per year due to some illness related to water quality.*
  • A full half of hospital beds in the world is taken by patients with illnesses related to the ingestion of non-drinkable water.

*Source: World Health Organization, 2008

  • The U.S. produced about 254 million tons of waste by 2013.
  • $200 billion a year is spent on solid waste management and lost energy resources from disposing trash*
  • Americans throw away 35 billion plastic bottles every year.
  • Only about 25% of the plastic produced in the U.S. is recycled.
  • If we recycled the other 75% we could save 1 billion gallons of oil and 44 million cubic yards of landfill space annually.
  • A plastic bottle of drinking water contains on average 4 cents worth of water. And takes up to 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill.
  • The sorting and collecting step is the major challenge of PET post-consumer recycling.
  • Each ton of reused plastic would save 685 gallons of oil and 30 cubic yards of landfill space.
  • It takes about 272 billion liters of water a year, worldwide, just to make empty plastic bottles.

*Source: LA Times, 2016

SPECIFICATIONS

  • A filter composed of silver ions and mineral charcoal for drinkable water treatment.
  • Able to filter 180 liters of water - or the equivalent of 3 months of use.
  • Able to fit directly into existing PET bottles.
  • Provided with lid and bottleneck adapter, suitable for standard PET bottles.
  • Infinitely reusable, with refillable filtering media sachets
  • Each EcoFilter® will sequester 6 PET bottles from garbage dumps and landfills.

Benefits to society

  • Reduction of the volume of garbage collected, with substantial improvements to the decomposition of organic matter at dumps and landfills.
  • Savings in oil consumption: 1 kg of plastic = 1.5 Liter bottles = 1 Liter of oil.
  • Carbon credits in the collection and transportation of materials for recycling.
  • Reduction of 70% of the energy necessary for the production of new PET bottles, from the selective send off of bottles to recycling plants.

PROPOSED SCOPE FOR PROJECT

  • Avoid the addition of 60.000 PET bottles per month from landfills.
  • Manufacturing and distribution of 10.000 EcoFilters/month
  • Total/year: 120.000 filters / 720.000 reused bottles.