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The Drinkable Book: The Only Book We’ll Let you Rip Up

by | Sep 7, 2015

Books do a lot for people — they educate, they entertain and they help us understand ourselves and our world.

What if books could do a little bit more? That’s what the team behind the Drinkable Book hopes to achieve with a new book designed to act not only as a text, but also as a water filter.

As the BBC explains:

The “drinkable book” combines treated paper with printed information on how and why water should be filtered.

Its pages contain nanoparticles of silver or copper, which kill bacteria in the water as it passes through.

In trials at 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper successfully removed more than 99% of bacteria.

Read the book, get four years of clean water

The Drinkable Book serves two purposes. First, its text teaches readers how to maintain clean water and how to avoid contaminating water with trash and human waste products.

Then, the pages itself serve as a water filter. Tear out a page, place it in a filter box and use it to clean impure water and make it safe to drink. These filters protect against diseases such as cholera and typhoid, and give people who might not have clean water sources the opportunity to make their own safe drinking water.

Each filter provides 30 days of drinkable water, and the entire book provides clean water for approximately four years.

See the book and support its development

The nonprofit pAge Drinking Paper is seeking Indiegogo funding to pilot test the Drinkable Book in various countries. They also need to prepare the Drinkable Book for mass production; right now, every page is made by hand.

Lastly, they need to ensure there are multiple versions of the Drinkable Book in different languages, as well as versions that use pictures to communicate to people who cannot read.

If you are interested in learning more about the Drinkable Book, visit page Drinking Paper.

Is this a cause you would support? What’s the most important way a book has helped you?