RefineStick

RefineStick aims to solve the drinking water problem of the flood affected people. Each year our country faces a scores of natural calamities. Flood is one of them. Scarcity of drinkable water becomes severe during flood. Presently, chlorine & iodine are used as disinfectant to purify water, but these have harmful side-effects. RefineStick is a small portable tool that can easily be used by the flood affected people to purify water. It is Bangladesh’s first and world’s cheapest portable filter. The price of this product is less than 1$, making it within the reach of the common people. These easy-to-use filter can vastly help to eliminate clean water crisis in both rural and urban areas.

Clean water crisis in our country is a known phenomenon. In Dhaka, more than 1 million people live in slums, where they don’t have a permanent source of clean water. Each year about one-third of our country is submerged in flood, which creates scarcity of pure water and exacerbate water-borne diseases. According to the WHO data published in May, 2014, Diarrheal diseases deaths in Bangladesh, reached 15,928

 or 2.19% of the total death. Currently, Chlorine & Iodine are used to purify water in emergency situation, but there are some drawbacks. These disinfectants create harmful by-products in water, so these can’t be a permanent solution. These also make the water odorous and can’t remove sediment from water. A portable, easy-to-use, low-cost filter can solve the problem.

RefineStick can help both urban and rural people to get drinkable water. In urban areas, the slum-dwellers, who live below the poverty line, suffer much for want of pure water. Most of the effective filters are extremely pricey, making them beyond the reach of the poor. RefineStick can serve these people. But the main target of the product is to help the flood affected people by providing them pure water.

RefineStick is an 8 inch long and 1.5 inch wide tool that can be used to get pure water in emergency situation. It needs to be connected with a contaminated water filled bottle or container in order to work. The main filtering material of this product is modified activated carbon. The modification is done by impregnating (undisclosed) nano particles on the carbon. E.coli and Chlorine removal capacity of the product have been tested and the results were admissible

RefinStick paves a new way to eliminate drinking water crisis of the flood affected people. It is the first portable filter in Bangladesh and also the cheapest in the world. As the minimum wage of the people in our country is very low, the highly priced water filters are beyond their reach. We have succeeded in keeping the price of RefineStick below 1$, making it available for everyone. Few other alternatives available in the international market use highly priced materials as filtering media, which make them expensive. Those are targeted for hikers and travelers whereas ours is targeted for the flood affected people. We have researched and found suitable filtering materials those are cheap and designed a unique business model to grow profit.

At present, the government or the NGOs supply chlorine and iodine to the flood affected people to purify water. But these have drawbacks like creating harmful by-products and making the water odorous. So, people are less interested to purify water with these. A portable, easy-to-use filter can contribute to the solution of this problem. But, 57 % of the total population of our country lives on less than $ 3.10 per day. So, the solution mustn’t be pricey. RefineStick is a low-cost, easy-to-use, portable tool that meets the criteria and it can contribute to the solution.

As RefineStick is not yet certified by any quality control authority, we're not serving any people for now. We're targeting to serve 10,000 people in one year after getting certified. We're hoping to serve more than 1,000,000 people in five years.

For the next year, our goal is to certify our product from WQA or SGS and to do a piloting. For the next five years, we're hoping to continue our research and deploy more portable products that can help other communities like the flood affected people in Bangladesh.

The main barrier that currently exists is the lack of funding and technical support. Present renowned filter provider companies might also launch this type of product in future, which will create competition.

We'll continue our research to improve our product and make it more efficient and cost effective. Also we'll try to deploy more portable products to help other communities.

Our solution team contains 3 members.

We have been researching on portable filters, filtering materials, filtering techniques as well as the impact of flood in our country for the last three years and we've solid knowledge about our product. We have our necessary mentors from different institutions including BCSIR. We can manage fully functional lab support to continue our research and improve our product.

We're not partnering with any organization currently.

RefineStick can serve all sorts of people. But our main targeted buyers are

1.  local NGOs who work to improve drinking water quality and help the flood affected people

and

2.  the government.

That's because we want to supply bulk quantities. We could easily reach our targeted population through these intermediaries and could get revenue from the contributors rather than the sufferers.

Aside from that, we're intending to reach our customers through third party sellers.

We'll spend the profits of first couple of years to develop the product as well as the team, and to expand into new areas and customers. We're expecting to work with professional chemists, mechanical engineers, as well as career coaches.

We're not in production yet, so we'll need grants and investment to continue the research and to certify the product's efficiency as well as to do piloting. We're hoping to cover our expenses by revenue streams after two year of production.

We've entered the tiger challenge for the fund to continue our research and to launch the product to the people. Also, to get mentoring on how we can improve our product so that it can contribute more for our society.

We would very much like to have support from NGOs who work to improve water quality, like WaterAid or BRAC as possible buyers. We would also like to have technical support from renowned filter provider companies like Unilever's Pure It or Aquasana.