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Bringing beauty to re-useable bottles of water

Britons drink their way through 13 billion single use plastic bottles of water each year but now Brunel University London product design graduate Richard Braine aims to end that by combining beauty, sustainable practicality and the power of crowdfunding.

Explained Richard: “While at Brunel, I began looking at re-useable water bottles for my final-year university product design project.

“Everything on the market was either ugly, made of cheap-looking plastic or metal or was aesthetically pleasing but didn’t filter out the chemical chlorine taste of a lot of our tap water. So BU Water, pronounced boo, was born.

“We wanted to get away from being dull but worthy but still address all the issues of re-useable bottles filled with tap water.

“BU not only looks gorgeous but is made of long-lasting and BPA free and dishwasher safe Tristan. At the heart of BU is an activated charcoal filter which filters out chemicals and that chlorine taste. We make ours from sustainable bamboo and use the same material for the air-tight lid.”

In designing the 700ml BU Water to be healthy for the planet, Richard, 27, also wanted to help the 800 million people on earth with no access to clean, drinkable water. So each one sold is to include a donation to “charity:water” which provides water to communities across the developing world.

The project already has its own Kickstarter page with a target of £15,000 with the first 250 expected to ship in May 2016 from as little as £17.