7 ms·
Compostable all-natural water filters
- stephengillie 14y agoInteresting. This isn't just a product, it's a product-as-a-service.
- zachallia 14y agoWe spent a lot of time figuring out the problems with current in home water drinking. One of the main things was that people forget to change their filter. We're looking to change that behavior!
- JulianMorrison 14y agoNow they will forget to be at home when the filter deliverer comes around.
- edzme 14y agoOooo the caraffe is slick!
- zdgman 14y agoThe ability to recycle the filters should have been played up more! That's one of the biggest things I hate about my current Brita filter. Would be interesting to see the subscription cost for filters after the initial run.
- zachallia 14y agoIt's going to be $15 every two months
- zdgman 14y agoThat's great considering that a single Brita is about seven bucks.
- gfosco 14y agoSeems about even, or more expensive if you put it that way... However the grocery store doesn't automatically charge you if you decide not to buy a new Brita filter this month. It looks like this will be a successful Kickstarter, so bravo to them! It's not directed at me. Words like organic, vegan, and compost-able do not attract me, and I could care less if my water pitcher is beautiful.
- CJefferson 14y agoNice idea, but I dislike claims like: Soma's proprietary formula produces the best tasting water. You'll notice a crisp, pure taste you won't find anywhere else. Really? While I appreciate water filtering, I want some real evidence that this water filter is considerably better than any other water filter on the market.
- ekianjo 14y agoGood idea. Like testing water from two indistinguishable cups and A/B and B/A fashion. That kind of data is easy to produce and can be used as a sales pitch.
- morsch 14y agoHow big is it? Seems like pretty essential information, but I can't see it on the page. The entire top half seems to be made of glass, so it's pretty big relative to the amount of water it carries. I'm not sure if having a filter delivered to you every two months is all that sustainable. And the people I know who filter their water wouldn't want any kind of plastic in it's path; but the people who filter water here are pretty fanatic about that. I guess the main attraction in the US is to get rid of the chlorine? Oh and $33 per delivery also seems like a lot? Are filters that expensive? (The page says the 3 filters in the first real pledge are $100+ in value.) (Edit: it's $15, see below, much more reasonable, sorry about that.)
- revelation 14y agoWhat exactly is filtered by this? In Germany, water from the tap is commonly found to be cleaner than the stuff you can buy in plastic bottles. The only application that comes to mind would be regulating water hardness.
- LaGrange 14y agoIn fact I tried San Francisco water, and it was completely fine. And there's also the obvious question about the carbon footprint of bringing coconut shells to US for manufacturing. On the other hand, in several places in Poland a water filter is, actually, fairly useful.
- chockablock 14y agoI use a carbon block filter (Clear2o) for SF tap water, and appreciate the lack of chlorine taste. (Or more properly, chloramine: http://www.sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=357 http://www.sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=357 )
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- danudey 14y agoA significant amount of bottled water is, in fact, tapwater. There are a lot of companies that are bottling your own tapwater and selling it to you for $4/L.
- lucian1900 14y agoIn (some parts of?) London, water is particularly hard. A filter makes it not taste of dust and prevents stupid dust spots on container. Some other places have chlorine-tasting water. For anything else? A filter is pretty much useless.
- mhp 14y agoI think the design is great, and from a business perspective I like their desire to do it on a subscription basis (like Proactiv for example). As a consumer, that annoys me a bit, but I guess they'll see how it turns out. HOWEVER, the United States has pretty awesome water coming right out of the tap. And charcoal based filters are mostly taste filters. They aren't going to remove most pollutants (you'd need a reverse osmosis filter for that). It's an aside to this product discussion, but I really don't know how we've been duped into buying products that support a whole industry of bottled water and water purification. I say that as I look at my dumb brita filter on the counter...
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- 001sky 14y agopitcher is made of lead free glass and the reservoir is BPA free -- This is pretty much standard, not really a USP
- wooster 14y ago"lead, mercury and arsenic" As the manufacturer of this product you're going to want to be very careful making claims like that in a public forum. I see no evidence of CDPH certification, despite the product being sold from San Francisco: When a manufacturer claims that a drinking water treatment device will reduce contaminants [such as lead, Cryptosporidium (protozoan cysts), pesticides, herbicides, solvents, heavy metals, bacteria and viruses] or makes other health related performance claims, the device must be certified by CDPH, pursuant to Health & Safety Code Section 116830. http://www.cdph.ca.gov/certlic/device/pages/watertreatmentdevices.aspx http://www.cdph.ca.gov/certlic/device/pages/watertreatmentde...
- nostromo 14y agoI wish they'd show someone using it. How big is it? Seems like it's about the size of a gallon jug. Maybe bigger. The hourglass shape, unlike a traditional filter, wastes a lot of fridge space. Do I have to remove the filter to pour? That would be a deal-breaker for me. If not, is it spout directional, or can I pour at any angle? Pouring from of a top-heavy hourglass could be awkward. Especially if it's weighted down with a filter.
- zachallia 14y agoIt's smaller than in the video. We had to use an early prototype there to have the video ready in time. It's designed to fit nicely even in small hands. You do not have to remove the filter to pour, there is a spout that is hidden but runs up the side. I'll make sure we get some pictures of the pitcher from angles that you can see the spout / lid.
- 001sky 14y agoMain Q is Can it fit on a d00r-shelf like a 1/2 gal milk? That's probably the once critical size constraint, IMHO. Without it, you are limited where you can put it (as well as taking up extra space). This is something I personally check for every pitcher/flask i get.
- sparebytes 14y agoI can't help but wonder why ya'll didn't show pouring from it.
- saidajigumi 14y agoThis and other products roughly similar to Brita filters all seem a bit ridiculous and wasteful. At least this one is glass and so free of plasticizers[1]. A simple drip-through filter isn't going to do that much to improve most U.S. water supplies. Instead, just get a multi-stage reverse osmosis filter unit. That'll take out virtually everything potentially nasty and/or bad tasting: chlorine, flouride, metal salts used to control algae, misc. minerals and so forth. Coffee and tea brewers, you really owe this to yourselves. The maintenance amounts to replacing a few filters in an under-sink unit every one to three years depending on your local water supply. No remembering to refill a pitcher, just a little extra spigot on your sink. [1] BPA-free isn't good enough. Replacing one plasticizer with another that also has high estrogenic activity is pointless.
- chockablock 14y agoThanks--you inspired me to check these out. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that undersink units go for ~$200.
- skewp 14y agoThe U.S. has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world.
- philwelch 14y agoYou can use a Brita pitcher in places where you're not allowed to install things under the sink, like when you're renting. But most importantly, a Brita pitcher gives you a good excuse to keep your drinking water in the fridge, so you never have to contend with having to drink warm or lukewarm water again.
- chm 14y agoDo you know what a plasticizer does? When it is used? In the preparation of what polymers? This is not an assault, just a hint. Read up on BPA, then go to your local dept. store's bottle section. Most of the bottles will be made of polymers that do not even involve BPA or BPs, but still advertise as BPA-free. It's only marketing.
- DareOlonoh 14y agoSeems like a great product and business model. I ditched my Brita filter for bottled water a couple years ago because of the black dots. It was embarrassing to pour water for people when there were black dots floating in it. Might have to switch back to a filter now.
- JshWright 14y agoAre you in the U.S.? On municipal water? What's wrong with your tap water?
- philwelch 14y agoI've used Brita filters for years and I've never experienced black dots. Did you change the filter too often? Not often enough?
- torhorway 14y agoif you skip the steps of soaking the filter for a day then you'll get a ton of black dots.
- theevocater 14y agothe black dots are just activated carbon (the filter) that escapes after the filter starts to break down. What is wrong with your tap water that you feel you can't drink it? I only filter mine because the water near me comes out with a pretty gross taste.
- cchuang 14y agoJust looked at the Kickstarter, looks like an interesting product. I could totally see this being pitched on Shark Tank for some reason.
- chm 14y agoChemist here: Drinking bottled water is like paying taxes twice. Drink tap water unless the taste is prohibitive. This company seems just another gimmick. The only person who might have a clue of the chemistry going on is the "world expert" David Beeman, who chooses to entertain us with marketing gibberish rather than facts. The vocabulary is chosen to confound the chemistry-illiterate viewer and appeal to chemophobia. Organic, BPA, PLA, vegan, plastic, "Catalytic activated coconut shell carbon", etc. I would like to have a chat with this "world expert". A big chunk of the world would give everything they have for access to our tap water. Gimme a break with your pathetic fear mongering.
- zachallia 14y agoEmail him! He developed the filtration for many major coffee chains (i.e. Starbucks) and has worked in the industry forever. I promise you he isn't a gimmick, and a regular consumer wouldn't understand the same things you would understand.
- chm 14y agoI might email him once I'm done studying. My point is that precisely because he understands what he's doing, he has the duty to explain it to others, or at least not confound them. From my perspective, the sales pitch is relying on chemophobia to hook viewers. No wonder people think of Kickstarter as a store. If the company really is serious, they should offer technical details concerning their product, the kind of details an investor wants. I'm willing to bet most people who funded the company so far have done so with blind trust in the designers/developers of the product. I hope I'd lose my bet!
- zachallia 14y agoAlso, people like to store water in the fridge, so it doesn't seem totally ridiculous to clean it and make it taste better before storing it.
- aioprisan 14y agohow do you pour the water out? don't you run into the same issue of taking that filter out? and the shame wastes so much space in the fridge, for better or worse, Brita ones are pretty efficient, space-wise
- ImJasonH 14y agoDoes the filter fall out when you pour it? I noticed the video never shows anybody actually pouring water out of it...
- mixmastamyk 14y agoHave seen a few comments about US water quality. It may be good in general, but the water here in Los Angeles is horrible (though sterile?). I grew up in Ventura County and never thought twice about tap water (and laughed at others too) until I moved here. Part of it is LA's fault, they use so much chlorine it smells like you're drinking from a jacuzzi. Even after letting it sit for a day or two for the chlorine/ozone to dissipate, it still tastes bad in a similar way. I'm not sure what the other minerals/contaminants are. Finally, our current building is old and we get red rusty water first thing in the morning once a week or so. So yes, we filter our water before drinking, pretentious or not. We have a PUR 3-stage attached to the sink, and it costs a bit more than I'd like, but honestly ~10 bucks a month is nothing compared to the night/day improvement we get from it. I hope the claims about removing heavy metals are true for my daughter's sake.
- dljsjr 14y agoYeah. A lot of people are up in arms about the fact that this might only mask taste, since it's nothing more than carbon-based filtration. Personally, I live in Escambia County, Florida... home of the worst water in the country, ranked. I don't know a single person that lives here who doesn't own a Brita filter because our water is nearly unpalatable. You will actually get strange looks if a local sees you drinking the tap water. And yes, I realize that the fact it is palatable at all puts us in a much better position than a great deal of the world. But why is it a crime for me to want my water to not taste like utter shit? I can understand the general dismay at the strength of the claims being made. But don't dump all over the product because it's "just" a fancy Brita filter. It looks great, it makes the water taste better, and compostable isn't a terrible sell either.
- ekianjo 14y agoHave you considered buying 20L water tanks from fresh sources as well? I guess that is probably the most expensive option but it might be the "safest" since they probably test the water thoroughly before shipping it.
- mixmastamyk 14y ago