LifeStraw Personal Water Filter – Is There One in Your Bug Out Bag?
The LifeStraw Personal Water Filter
If you are like me and like to travel off the beaten track at times, having regular access to clean drinking water is of the utmost importance. When I was hunting the mountains in New Zealand, I never had to think about carrying water as there was always a plentiful supply of fresh clean water from the mountain rivers, streams and tarns. In fact I don’t recall carrying a water bottle that much at all.
Having since worked in the very hot, dry remote desert and outback regions of Western Australia, the importance of available drinking water took on a whole new meaning for me, and I am never without a water bottle. Now, I like to travel to various countries and get off the beaten track a little when I can. I still carry a water bottle, but I also carry stashed away in my pack a small LifeStraw Personal Water Filter. This is my back up should I run out of bottled water, with this I can drink water from dirty water sources I would never think of touching previously.
The LifeStraw water filter is a relatively small sturdy plastic tube at around 230mm x 25mm (9”x1”), so it fits easily into a day pack or backpack and weighs next to nothing at around 57grams (2 ounces). It does get a little heavier after use as it will contain some residue water. The LifeStraw water filter contains no moving parts, chemicals or batteries so I don’t have to worry about it breaking or leaking something horrible into my pack contents. The LifeStraw will filter out 99% of waterborne bacteria and parasites, so you can safely drink water directly from lakes, rivers, ponds, puddles etc, just put the lower part of the straw in the water, and sip through the other end. After drinking, blow back into the filter to clear out the dirty water from the filter. My preferred way of using the filter is to scoop up water first with my water bottle and then use the LifeStraw filter to drink directly from the water bottle.
A traveller drinks river water from her canteen through a LifeStraw water filter
Apparently the LifeStraw can filter up to 1000ltrs (264 gallons) of contaminated water before it needs replacing. As I mainly keep it for emergencies or those rare times I get caught out, I don’t think I will ever get close to using it to full capacity.
Now, if you are one of those rare extreme adventurers who get caught out in impossible survival situations and are almost dying of thirst, I have heard of some desperate souls that have used this LifeStraw water filter to drink their own urine, which apparently did make it somehow acceptable for drinking. 
If you have have occasion to use the LifeStraw filter in dirty water, a tip on returning home is to suck tap water through the filter, then purge the water filter by blowing back into it and then leave it to dry with the caps off. I also have a couple of these filters for home use, as they are excellent for any short term emergencies, like major power cuts or cyclones etc that may lead to temporary water shortage and contamination. You can guarantee in a clean water shortage situation that all bottled water will be gone from the shop shelves within a day. I also keep one of these water filters in my car, for a ‘just in case’ situation, for example a mechanical breakdown in a remote rural location could see me without adequate bottled water.
A young girl, drinks clean water through a LifeStraw from a large bowl of dirty water
The LifeStraw personal water filter has been around since 2005 (when it won Time Magazine’s invention of the year); it has since been used around the world under extreme conditions for humanitarian relief as a regular source of clean filtered water, so it has more than successfully proved itself under the worst of conditions.
Check out the LifeStraw Personal Water Filter
Andy (PlanSurvive.com)
