Lifestraw a Life Saver

he looks highGlobally, about 6,000 people a day die from water-borne disease. These are preventable deaths but, in many places it is too expensive to provide clean water for everyone and as a result people contract water-borne diseases. A fancy new drinking straw can stop 99.99% of parasites and bacteria from drinking water.

It’s called the Lifestraw and is currently being tested in the field. It is not as small as your average straw, but it’s small enough to wear around your neck. The manufacturing costs are low too – only $3 per unit. 70,000 units were handed out to earthquake victims in Kashmir last year. More testing is needed, but this is off to a very promising start!

Thanks, Kathryn!

Sonic Fabric

dressEver wanted to wear your favourite bands, well how about their album? Now you can!

Sonic Fabric is a a fabric woven out of old audio cassettes. The great part is not just that reuses otherwise trashed material, but that it can still be used to play music. Since the fabric retains the audio signature all you have to do is run a tape head over it.

One of the members of the band Phish has even worn one on stage and “played” it live.