3

LENS

Providing clean, safe, drinkable water to those in need

A

ccording to Faircap, over 1.8 million

people die from drinking

contaminated water every year,

while waterborne diseases infect

over 4 billion people. In response to

this, Faircap has developed “an open

source antibacterial water filter, intended to provide

clean drinking water for everyone”. This pocket-sized

filter can be screwed into a plastic bottle, enabling the

safe consumption of water from almost any source. As

a home filter, a single Faircap can purify enough water to

provide for a family of four.

CLEAN WATER

Led by Mauricio Cordova, The Faircap Project began

after a trip to the Amazon Rainforest,“I realised that no

matter where you are on the planet, we all will be

suffering from more contamination from human and

industrial activities in rivers, lakes, and natural water

reserves,” Mauricio explained.

Following POC21, Mauricio was selected by the

Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) to receive a grant

supporting the research, design, production, testing, and

implementation of the Faircap filter project. And as part

of the grant, Mauricio was partnered with Oxfam

International to prototype multiple versions of the

Faircap filter for various uses cases, including a mini

version for personal use and a more robust filter for

small communities.

THE MAKER MOVEMENT IS KEY...

Oxfam aims to take Mauricio’s design to a final product

that can be produced in large quantities and at a low

cost, so that any humanitarian organisation can make

use of the Faircap filters. Four months after first

receiving HIF support, Mauricio made significant

progress in defining the final 3D designs while working

with two labs to prepare the first batch for production.

Mauricio explains that one of the most important

reasons the maker movement is key to humanitarian

innovation is that “it opens up many more opportunities

for finding technical solutions by many more actors”.

Previously, only well-funded research labs or established

companies could reasonably offer a product or service

for emergency relief or economic development. Now,

however, there is a growing army of makers who are

immensely passionate about digital fabrication.

Mauricio’s approach of developing a product with an

open approach from the very beginning meant that it

was much easier to leverage a large community of

contributors to make improvements on Faircap designs

and even propose new ideas and solutions for future

water filtration systems.

Mauricio explains that the main difference between

traditional research and development, compared with

open source and open innovation, is that access to

online information means that there are no restrictions

on who can become an inventor. Open innovation and

design can help transfer more power to responsible and

creative end-users seeking to drive change through

decentralised problem-solving.

Faircap

Left

Faircap’s initial

3D printed

prototype filter

Above

Mauricio Cordova

proudly takes a

swig of freshly-

filtered water