Your Drinking Habit Can Help Save Lives. Seriously

lifestraw go bottlePounding water after a hardcore night of boozing or completing a grueling 2.5K walk/run makes sense. But you should also be drinking water on the regular. It boosts metabolism and energy, helps keeps your skin and hair looking shinier and healthier, promotes bathroom regularity, flushes out toxins, and elevates mood.

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Well, that’s if your water isn’t tainted by germs that’ll give you the runs or, worse, kill you. Worldwide more than 3.4 million people per year die of water-related disease, according to water.org. In Africa alone, there are more than 345 million without access to water.

We know what you’re asking: “Well why don’t they just live here?” It’s not that simple, but LifeStraw has come up with a simple solution to combat the issues of dirty water and lack of access to clean water on two fronts.

The first being that their products, like the LifeStraw Go Water Bottle with Integrated 1000-Liter LifeStraw Filter ($55 @ Amazon.com) and LifeStraw Personal Water Filter ($20 @ Amazon.com), filter contaminants from water through their filtration systems (99.9 percent of bacterial and protozoa, to be accurate). 

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On a larger scale, LifeStraw has been helping to combat the aforementioned water issues since 2005. For every LifeStraw filter purchased, one child in a developing community is provided safe drinking water for an entire year. That’s right. While that 50 bones might otherwise go toward booze or video games — two totally spend-worthy causes — helping to provide someone with clean water for 365 days is clearly more important. If you don’t think so, you’re most likely a mental patient.