How to Purify Water With Two Plastic Bottles

Clean, fresh drinking water is a vital resource and one thing you can never have enough of on a camping trip. Fortunately, simple water purification methods can help you generate all the clean water you need without having to carry expensive and heavy equipment. With two bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) -- the plastic commonly used in water and soda containers -- you can use the ultraviolet purification and thermal power of the sun to treat dirty water and create fresh, safe drinking water.

Things You'll Need

• Two plastic PET bottles
• Water-resistant tape
• Flat area with good solar exposure
• Unfiltered water

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Instructions

• 1

  Rinse both bottles carefully with the cleanest water available, even if not purified, and allow them to dry in the sun. This step can take place at home or in the outdoors, but the bottles must dry completely in the sun in order to be sterilized.

• 2

  Remove the caps from both bottles and fill one bottle slightly less than half full with water from a stream, lake, rainwater or other outdoor source.

• 3

  Place the bottle on its side without a lid, allowing any excess water to spill out of the bottle. Pour a bit more water out of the bottle, making sure that none will flow out when on its side.

• 4

  Connect the open mouths of the bottles with tape.

• 5

  Completely seal the connection between the two bottles by adding additional rings of tape around the two connected mouths.

• 6

  Place the bottles on flat ground with the bottle containing water slightly lower than the empty bottle. Do not allow water to flow from one bottle to another.

• 7

  Sit the bottles in the sun until the water has evaporated from the first bottle and condensed in the second. Water collected in the second bottle will be purified by the sun's ultraviolet rays and desalinated by the evaporation process, leaving most metals and minerals in the first bottle.

• 8

  Carefully remove the tape and separate the bottles without letting the water mix. The water in the second bottle is purified.