While a handful of the wealthy routinely drink expensive, high function mineral water, “boutique water”, as it is called, one out of five people in the world cannot count on getting any safe drinking water at all.

One in three of the world’s population lives in an environment lacking such basic sanitary facilities as toilets and sewers and where untreated waste is discharged into rivers, lakes and marshes. People who must use that water for drinking and cooking are at high risk of contracting diarrhea or diseases from parasites transmitted through the water.