TED: LIFESAVER Systems

1.1 billion people are trapped by water poverty every year. Michael Pritchard is the inventor and CEO of LIFESAVER Systems. Pritchard was born in Epsom, Surrey UK in 1967. He was educated at Gordonstoun School in Scotland and went to the University of Redlands in California. Michael started his career by selling computers for Apple and remained in the industry for ten years. In 2004 Pritchard developed the LIFESAVER bottle in response to the Tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina. The LIFESAVER Bottle launched in 2007 and has played a top role in personal water filtration. LIFESAVER is being used by both UK and US military and is also being tested by other militaries around the world. The goal of the product is to get it in with governments and aid agencies around the world. In his TED presentation Pritchard describes the necessity for clean drinking water all over the world. He states nothing is being done about the shortage of safe drinking water for most of the world because it is too immense of a problem for any one government or person to counteract. He states that three and a half billion people a year suffer from water shortage, and two million children die a year from water shortage. In 2004 Pritchard started developing the LIFESAVER Bottle in response to the Tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina. He was struck by the immense number of people that had been displaced from their homes with no safe drinking water and the feeble action taken to give aid in each crisis. He observed that the response time to ship drinking water was not only slow but too little in ration. He observed that thousands were made to gather in camps to get aid and drinking water, which helped to spread sickness, disease, and hysteria. He shows that by shipping the LIFESAVER Bottle, People can stay where they are while having access to safe drinking water. Not only would this allow people to survive, but it would allow them to rebuild and continue on, creating a faster recovery time for natural disasters. Pritchard makes valid points why he developed the bottle and also explains how it works. Before the LIFESAVER bottle was developed, the best hand water filters were only able to filter down to two hundred nanometers (which is the size of the smallest bacteria). The size of the smallest virus is about twenty-five nanometers. These numbers are important because before the LIFESAVER it was still possible to contract a harmful bacteria or virus even with a water pump. Pritchard then explains the benefits of LIFESAVER filters. LIFESAVER Bottle filters at fifteen nanometers, which allows no bacteria or virus to get through. It lasts up to six thousand liters and then shuts off using failsafe technology to protect the user. It has an internal cartridge that is easily removable and replaceable after its expiration, this makes it easy for a person to get the drinking water they need to survive in harsh conditions. The product was designed to save and sustain lives, but it can also save and sustain money. Pritchard has the genius idea of using the nature’s water cycle instead of the costly transportation of water through infrastructure. Clouds pick up water from the sea, desalinate it for free, and then transport and dump it onto mountains