This innovative book aims to help teach water hygiene to some of the nearly 1 billion people around the world who don’t have access to clean water for basic needs like drinking, cooking and washing. And, uniquely, it also provides cheap water filters, formed from its tear-out pages, which are designed to kill the bacteria that cause 3.4 million people to die each year from water-borne illnesses. It was created by the humanitarian charity WATERisLIFE and ad agency DDB, teaming up with American researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Virginia, and is based on technology invented by chemist Dr Theresa Dankovich and further developed by New York-based typographer Brian Gartside.
The Drinkable Book was designed and produced by Brian Gartside, WATERisLIFE, Carnegie Mellon University and the University Of Virginia. The mission of WATERisLIFE is to provide clean water through sanitation and hygiene programs.
Find out how you can provide someone in need with a Drinkable Book here.
Max Borka was born in Belgium in 1954, and currently works as a journalist, critic, lecturer and consultant in Berlin. He has written numerous books and curated exhibitions and events in the fields of art, architecture, fashion and design, including. As the former Director of the Interieur Foundation in Kortrijk, Belgium, he was the founder and first Editor-in-Chief of DAMn° magazine and recently launched Mapping the Design World, a worldwide platform on social design. He currently teaches Design Theory and History at the Fachhochschule Potsdam.
The soluble book is printed in food-grade ink on paper coated with silver nanoparticles. Every copy comes packaged in a 3D printed box, which converts into a filtration tray. After each page is torn out and slipped into a slot in the tray, it serves as a water filter, with the nanoparticles decreasing bacteria in contaminated water by more than 99.9 percent, making it potable. Each book is said to contain enough pages to filter up to 5,000 litres, providing a family’s drinking water for up to four years. An initial run of 100 copies was printed in English and Swahili to be sent to Kenya, but WATERisLIFE also plans to distribute it around the world after further testing, and hopes to raise funds for a commercial release in 2015. I (Max Borka)
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