Green Daily

Bottling water from some distant mountain stream (or just filtering tap water and re-selling to unsuspecting customers) sure seems like a lot of work for nothing -- particularly as drinkable water routinely falls from the sky. However, while standing in the rain with your mouth open hoping to catch a drink is impractical, inefficient, embarrassing and cold, capturing that H2O is much simpler than it might at first appear.

Enter the Filterbrella. As the name suggests, this clever variation on the standard umbrella captures and filters rainwater for you to drink.

It works like this: moisture in the air condenses and falls in the form of rain; that which lands on the dome of your umbrella is siphoned into a hollow rod made of activated carbon (that serves as a filter); the filtered water is dispensed into a plastic bottle attached to the handle. Voila, you have drinking water.

I wouldn't recommend this if you routinely walk around, say, Manhattan (or any other major urban area) as you're just as likely to capture runoff from the buildings above as you are drops straight from the sky, and the thought of drinking that (even filtered) makes my stomach churn. But for those of us living a less-than-urban-existence, this seems like a novel way to save a little water that might have otherwise gone to waste.

[via Keetsa]