ESF Grand Challenge Scholars Program scholar, Kristina Macro, explains how sustainable engineering design requires a systems perspective, where fields such as economics, ecology, and sociology inform engineering.

The drinkable book, which is a novel concept for providing potable water.

To address the grand challenge of providing access to clean water, it is critical to understand the economic, environmental, and social impacts that a new technology or system will have both in the short and long term. An exciting new technology that addresses this challenge is the Drinkable Book. This product uses silver nanoparticles embedded in filter paper to kill bacteria and make water safe to drink in areas that do not have access to potable water.

Each page of the drinkable book is a filter to clean many pollutants from water.

The filter paper was developed by Dr. Theresa Dankovich, and with the help of a design team, it was made into a book that also includes educational information about water-borne diseases and how to keep water clean. To use the book, one simply tears out a page, slides it into the slot on the filter box that comes with it, and pours water through it. The amount of time it takes for the water to filter through depends on the turbidity of the water (Nodjimbadem 2015). Each filter can clean about 26 gallons of water, so the entire 25-page book would last four years for one person.

When water is poured through the paper, 99.9 percent of harmful bacteria such as cholera, E. coli, and typhoid are killed (Berkowitz 2015). The bacteria are inactivated by silver ions during the percolation process, so they are not just removed by filtration. The silver loss from the filter paper is minimal, with levels under 0.1 ppm, the US EPA limit for silver in drinking water (Dankovich & Gray 2011). These results show that the silver embedded filter paper could be an effective appropriate technology for emergency water treatment. The book meets the objectives for emergency treatment systems to be cost effective, highly portable, nontoxic, easy to use and distribute, and have a low energy input.

Field testing of the drinkable book filter paper.

Field testing of the filter paper has been done in South Africa, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, and Bangladesh in partnership with the organizations WATERisLIFE and iDE-Bangladesh (Levine 2016). These studies have shown that the paper works as a filter for water in many different regions of the world, with one case showing that the paper was able to reduce bacteria levels in dilute raw sewage to levels comparable to U.S. tap water. The field testing team worked with community members to address their concerns and opinions about the design. This will help them ensure that the final design is accepted by the communities. As a result of working with the communities, they are working on a simple design for filter paper holders that will be easy for community members to use.

This technology has been seen as a solution that could help reduce the number of cases of water-borne diseases and increase access to potable water all over the world. However, it is important to understand what economic, environmental, and social impacts the Drinkable Book may have before it is implemented at a large scale.

From an economic perspective, the Drinkable Book’s low cost makes widespread distribution feasible. However, the nature of the book’s production and materials creates a dependency of the communities served on the pAge Drinking Paper organization created by Dankovich and other non-profits. The books would most likely be given to communities as donations, which although helpful in short term and emergency situations, could become detrimental to the communities in the future (Prough 2015). Considering a moral obligation to help people in need and the risk of perpetuating the cycle of dependency on wealthier countries is an ethical dilemma that needs to be explored for any engineering project that affects communities in developing countries.

The filter paper in the Drinkable Book may have negative environmental impacts. The silver nanoparticles in the filter paper could pose a threat to ecosystems if they are released into the environment (Prough 2015). Even though levels of silver loss were minimal in lab experiments, the amount of loss may change over time as the paper is used more and breaks down. The filter paper is designed to be thrown away once it is no longer effective, so there could be issues with the proper disposal of the filter papers. The book could be more sustainable than other energy intensive treatment processes, but a life cycle analysis of the book and its filter papers would need to be done to fully assess its environmental impact.

Providing clean water for communities that did not have access to potable water previously would most likely have positive social impacts. Less people will suffer and die from water-borne diseases, and community members wouldn’t have to worry about getting sick from drinking water. However, as previously mentioned, a sense of dependency may have a negative social impact.

Although there are many concerns regarding its economic, environmental, and social impacts, the Drinkable Book has the potential to provide access to clean water for people all over the world. These concerns must be addressed in future studies while applying a systems perspective to the design process. Approaching the design from a systems perspective will make it possible to solve the grand challenge of providing access to clean water in a sustainable way that will have a positive impact on the communities it serves.

References
Berkowitz, K. (2015). Living by the book: chemist Theresa Dankovich’s filters could save millions of lives. Human Ecology, (1), 41.
Dankovich, T. A., & Gray, D. G. (2011). Bactericidal paper impregnated with silver nanoparticles for point-of-use water treatment. Environmental Science & Technology, 45(5), 1992-1998. doi:10.1021/es103302t
Levine, J. 2016. pAge Papers: Pilot scale tests of Drinkable Book. Indiegogo. Retrieved from: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/page-papers-pilot-scale-tests-of-drinkable-book#/
Nodjimbadem, K. August 16, 2015. Could This ‘Drinkable Book’ Provide Clean Water to the Developing World?. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved from:

Fig 1: Image credit: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/page-papers-pilot-scale-tests-of-drinkable-book#/
Fig 2: Image credit: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/page-papers-pilot-scale-tests-of-drinkable-book#/
Fig 3: Image credit: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/page-papers-pilot-scale-tests-of-drinkable-book#/