I have a big birthday coming up this year. A BIG birthday. Typically, when we have a birthday or anniversary party, we tell everyone that while we prefer they not bring a gift, if they absolutely must, we will accept only gifts that can be drunk. Everything else will be lit on fire and thrown in Jamaica Bay.

Our friends are generous, wonderful people, and they have brought us many beautiful bottles of booze over the years. This year, however, I’m going to be asking for a different drinkable gift.

Meet WATERisLIFE. They teamed up with researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia to develop drinking water filtration solutions which they are now in the process of distributing. Their current projects include the Straw (for post-disaster personal use), household bucket filters, and my favorite, the absolutely genius Drinkable Book, which is explained in the video below.

I am a born researcher, and I take no one’s word for anything, so I checked out the organization.  As their site indicates, the Better Business Bureau has given them an A rating (they haven’t yet been around long enough to get an A+ rating), Scamadviser gives them a 100% (a good thing!), and I wasn’t able to find anything suspicious about the organization or the management. I think I’m most impressed with their not-for-profit business model.  They formed the WaterisLife Village, a network of corporate donors who commit an annual amount to cover WaterisLife’s annual operating costs, so that 100 percent of donations can be funneled into water relief projects.  Very impressive thinking.

Donation information can be found here.