Charcoal is not just for chicken!

While in Australia over the 2016-2017 festive season, we found a store with all sorts of goodies I like, especially this one. A charcoal water filter.

In Switzerland, our water is of a very high quality, but it has a lot of lime/calcium in it and often I’ve noticed a strange smell.

Voila! Slip one of these little babies into the jug and after five hours the water is purified. No smell, no taste – just that clean water sensation. Delicious!

Here’s the one we found, but I’m sure there are plenty of other brands selling them. I like that this comes in cardboard with minimal packaging. The sticks are fragile though, so you need to be careful they don’t splinter when putting them in the jug and pouring from it. By pure luck, the first one I used sits nicely under the rim and doesn’t move.

Minimal packaging

The remaining two sticks

Here’s a short version of the blurb: “This package contains several sticks of kishu binchotan … it absorbs chlorine and heavy metals. It also alkalises water.”

Each one lasts about two months (I’m going to stretch mine for longer and see if I notice a change). For me, this is way better than a plastic set up where you have to buy the plastic-coated filters. And once it’s done it’s job, the stick goes into the compost. Or the packaging says you can put it in the fridge to soak up smells.

Do you use charcoal sticks? Or do you have a different water filter system?

Wishing you a wonderful day.