THE DRINKABLE BOOK

Source- http://www.designboom.com/technology/the-drinkable-book-cleans-purifies-water-with-advanced-filtering-paper-05-06-2014/

They say a book is a man’s best friend, but who would have thought that Dr. Theresa Dankovich a researcher at Carnegie Mellon would take a stride to redefine all we thought a book could do.

Astonishingly enough Dr. Theresa during her PhD at McGill University developed a paper with high antimicrobial activity. She engineered this sturdy sheet of paper, which is embedded with silver nanoparticles and put together as “THE DRINKABLE BOOK”. The pages of the drinkable book having silver nanoparticles coating are fatal for 99.9% of bacteria, such as cholera, E. coli and typhoid that contaminates the water, thus rendering the water free of harmful pathogens and fit to drink.

This book meets the US EPA guidelines for bacteria removal to produce safe drinking water and the process of purification in itself is an easy task. One can tear the filter pages in the book and put it in the filter box that happens to encase the book, pour the water and what filters out is water free of microbes, healthy and safe to drink. Each filter can provide 30 days of clean water and the book assures freedom from water related diseases like typhoid, cholera, etc. for a period of 4 years.

The drinkable book provides a great promise for the world which faces the problem of a whooping death rate of 3.4 million deaths each year from waterborne diseases. Additionally this book acts like a manual for educating people about water safety and healthy drinking habits and threats that may surround them in terms of water they drink. Hence for the purpose of educating people and providing a low cost filter Dr. Theresa has teamed up with a non-profit organization called Water Is Life, along with an agency called DDB NY to make this discovery of hers available to the real world with the hope of bringing about a change with this book which will truly be a man’s best friend.

Source- http://www.campaignbrief.com/2014/05/the-drinkable-book-revolutiona.html

REFERENCES-

·         http://www.fastcocreate.com/3031955/anatomy-of-a-cannes-contender-a-drinkable-book-delivers-clean-water-in-a-new-form

·         https://drinkablebook.tilt.com/the-drinkable-book

Want to breathe Fresh Air in Delhi?

As the lifespan of Delhiwalas, even with iron lungs, is decreasing due the worsening air quality, some natural lungs are waiting out there to help us without anything in return. No air purifier can do what they can do that is, decrease carbon dioxide and increase oxygen. Yes! We are talking about our dear plants. Many researches are done by NASA and other organizations including our very own environmental activist, Kamal Meattle, CEO of Paharpur Business centre & Software Technology Incubator Park based in New Delhi, India, on these plants.

Meattle, with his rigorous research has come up with the perfect formula for healthier conditions in Paharpur Business Center (a 50,000 sq ft building, with over 1,200 plants for 300 building occupants). The Indian Government has rated the building as the healthiest building in Delhi.

Here are three such plants that work well indoors with minimum maintenance in Delhi conditions: 

The Living Room Plant:

 

 The Areca Palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens) does great air cleansing work during the day by removing Carbon Dioxide.

The Bedroom Plant:

The Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata) takes over by converting Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen at night, does well in bedroom. 

The Specialist Plant:

 

The Money Plant (Epipremnum aureum) does the job of filtering out removing Formaldehyde and other Volatile Organic Compounds and also reduces PM levels.

Time to get some fresh air at home!!!

Visit the website http://breatheeasy123.com/clean-air-home/plants/ for more details on these plants!

What the pl@@@@@stic !!

Plastic is the most egregious offender amongst all the packaging material. This commonly used packaging  material, also known as Styrofoam is a piece of white toxic material which is found in pretty much everything from surfboards to coffee cups to table tops and finds its way to the landfills mostly. What a nuisance..ahh! It is just not toxic or harming the environment but also a single cubic foot of this material has the energy of about a liter and a half of petrol yet we would dispose it off as thrash within a few days of use.

Now what ? we do need packaging material. Don’t we?

So an organization called ECOVATIVE after years of effort came up with a biologically compatible packaging material which was strong, sustainable, and comparatively cheaper to produce using..MUSHROOM’s mycelium and not petroleum!!!

Now, mycelium is an amazing material, because it's a self-assembling material. It actually takes things we would consider waste, things like husks or woody biomass and transforms them into a chitinous polymer. The mycelium acts as a natural glue and by using mycelium as a glue, the agricultural waste can form any custom mold shape, engineered to protect any product just like in the plastic industry. 

Ecovative basically used a few steps to develop this awesome product. 

Agricultural waste, feedstock was taken and it was put in a tool, physically filling an enclosure of the shape required. Mycelium was grown on and through its surface forming a biocomposite, (MYCOBOND as they like to call it!!) ,  as the mycelium continued to grow and digest the plant husk and create a complex network around it binding it together, it essentially became a cohesive hold,  this living material binded together to form packaging material of all shapes. After having finished growing packaging parts which only takes a couple of days they were heat treated to stop the growth process to ensure that no spores or allergens were produced. These sustainable high performance parts are then safe and ready for shipping.

The product has properties like insulation, fire-resistance, moisture-resistance, vapor-resistance, it can absorb acoustical impacts, and best of all when it gets to the customer, it's not trash, they can actually put this in their natural ecosystem without any processing, and it's going to improve the local soil, because it is made of natural materials, and is hence 100 percent compostable in the backyard. So it is a win- win situation !!

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-2TEmLtQE