When you’re traveling, you don’t always have the luxury of clean, filtered water. So, what do you do? Keep purchasing single-use plastic bottles of water to add to a developing country’s landfill, waterways, or open spaces? Bring along a filtering system that you hardly know how to use? Suck it up and hope for the best?
The answer can be as easy as bringing your own water bottle with filtration system, if you have a Grayl Ultralight Purifier Bottle.
Whether you’re filling it from a hotel sink, a trailside stream, or anywhere else where you may not trust the water source, a Grayl bottle provides “one press” purification and filtration. All you have to do is fill the bottle, press the filter in, and drink.
Sounds too easy? The Grayl purifier cartridge is good for 300 uses (40 gallons), and replacement cartridges are available so you don’t have to buy a whole new bottle. Its electroabsorptive media captures pathogens and inorganic contaminants, and its ultra-powered activated carbon filters more impurities like chemicals and heavy metals better than block or granulated carbon. All that takes only 15 seconds. And in between uses, silver-treated zeolites keep the purifier fresh between uses.
What does it keep out?
- 99.9999 percent of viruses (like Rotavirus and Hepatitis A)
- 99.9999 percent of bacteria (like E coli and Salmonella)
- 99.999 percent of protozoan cysts (like Giardia and Cryptosporidium)
- Filters particulates (like sediment and dirt), many chemicals (like chlorine and benzene), and heavy metals (like lead and arsenic)
The bottle weighs only 10.9 ounces, and has an integrated attached loop that you can use to clip onto a backpack and keep your hands free.
Two special notes when caring for your Grayl: don’t freeze it (purifier cartridges can withstand up to two freeze/thaw cycles, but then performance begins to diminish) and don’t use it to purify boiling water (which will destroy the purification media).
Otherwise, have at it and take it everywhere.
The Grayl Ultralight Purifier Bottle comes in orange, green, blue, and black, and lists for $59.95 on the Grayl site.