The Environmental Benefits of Boxed Water

Everyone is pretty familiar with that shocking commercial that shows us how many plastic water bottles Americans use, enough to stretch around the world over 100 times. As guilty as one might feel about it, it has become a dependency – and as a bad habit, it’s not easily broken.

On top of the waste that is obvious (plastic bottles in the trash), there are the problems with those bottles that don’t come instantly to mind. Plastic bottle production uses huge amounts of oil, not to mention the pollution created in transporting them. While it can sometimes to be difficult to imagine the distant future and how damaging all this plastic is for our environment, what is instantly terrifying are the studies that plastic leaks BPA into the water, which is linked to a variety of health problems, such as breast and prostate cancer and low sperm count.

An obvious fix is to have a reusable, swish bottle. But that isn’t always an opportune option. Boxed water.  75% of the container is made from paper that will not leach dangerous chemicals into the very water you are drinking.  The cartons are shipped unfilled to various retailing-points and filled on demand as needed. According to the company this is reducing transportation costs and environmental impact dramatically.

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Billboard Produces Drinkable Water Out of Thin Air

What would a great ad for a university of technology be? An ad, that itself, solves a problem through technology. This is exactly what the University of Engineering and Technology of Peru and their ad agency have done.  They created the first billboard in the world to make drinking water out of thin air and alleviate the lives of Peru's people.

Trying to inspire young people to pursue careers in engineering, the university and ad teams decided to show how technology can be used to solve local problems. One such problem in Lima is the lack of running water. Due to the extremely dry climate with an annual precipitation of less than 1 inch, most people draw water from wells that are often polluted. On the other hand, the atmospheric humidity in Lima approximates 83%.

A study shows that the Andean glaciers, which provide fresh water for the residents of Peru, among other countries, have shrunk between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s. As water supplies dwindle amid climate change, growing populations and food insecurity issues innovative solutions must be developed.

The panel consists of five machines which convert humidity into water through use of air and carbon filters and a condenser.  This reverse osmosis, a water purifying process then stores the water in five tanks located at the top of the structure. The filtered water flows into a pipe at the bottom of the billboard, supplying the neighboring community with clean water. In the three months since it was first installed, the billboard has produced 2,496 gallons of water.

Hopefully enrollment has increased at the University.

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