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What are the Anthill Cool Company Awards?

The Cool Company Awards were launched in 2006 as a way for Anthill to acknowledge and celebrate Australian organisations that are doing things differently to bring about positive change. Cool Companies stay one step ahead of the rest. They breed leaders who are rule-makers and rule-breakers. They are trend-setters in attitude and action. Quite simply, they are … cool! More.

321 Water

Company: 321 Water
Website: 321-water.com/thirst.html
State: VIC
Category: Innovation

Gretha Oost came to Australia from the The Netherlands in 2004, bringing with her a passion for environmental protection and a knack for marketing her own ideas. She settled in Melbourne and launched halfateaspoon.com to showcase her products and vision.

Her latest creation is 321 Water, a portable, on-the-go water filter. The name refers to the three litres of water required to make one litre of bottled water.

The name doesn’t address the 118,000 tonnes of plastic drink containers manufactured in Australia each year. But the product sure makes a start. Only 35 percent of those containers are recycled; the rest tumble into landfills. And the demand for bottled water in Australia is rising 10 percent per year.

The 321 Water solution takes a small but accurate shot at those numbers. The product filters tap water in much the same way an espresso machine makes coffee. Consumers fill the 321 Water cyclindrical container, insert the plunger and push down until it reaches the bottom of the container. Consumers can then drink the now-filtered water immediately or cap it and use it later. The container holds just under 500 millilitres.

321 Water is created from recycled materials, and is free of the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) which leaks out of plastic in many reusable water bottles and is a known contaminant.

According to halfateaspoon.com, there have been 10,000 pre-orders for 321 Water, which cost $39 in Australia and $55 internationally. Oost’s company is now rolling out the product, shipping expected within 14 days.

The halfateaspoon site also promotes another Oost creation, the ShowerWatch. It’s a waterproof timer that creates awareness of time spent in the shower.

The name of Oost’s website, by the by, refers to a statistic she lives by: If all the Earth’s available water is visualised as one litre, the amount of drinkable water would fill half a teaspoon.

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