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If you’ve got ever had the pleasure of ingesting from a pure spring, you would possibly sense the style, or possibly you’ll name it a sense. Some individuals hunt for the pleasure of ingesting uncooked water at springs in nature –– referred to as “residing water” in Hebrew –– and that’s the story of the 2 founders of MAYU, a brand new type of water machine firm from Israel that makes economical and ecological sense.
They be a part of a small group of entrepreneurs around the globe that wish to remodel the capitalist machine with firms like Coca Cola and PepsiCo promoting bottled faucet water to American customers. MAYU founders Shay Eden and Ze’ev Zohar have been lovers of spring water who each got here to the conclusion that water was damaged. They wanted to discover a option to change it holistically for well being causes and for the planet.
None of the options they discovered domestically in Israel such because the Strauss Tami4 machine or a Brita pitcher might come near delivering water as nature makes it, the way in which they might discover it at native springs in Jerusalem or close to Michmoret the place they each dwell at this time. Early checks on the most effective filters available in the market confirmed them that units customers purchase solely take away about 5% of the issue. Reverse osmosis applied sciences could make water clear however with out life. Even the springs and uncooked water they knew from their childhoods have been beginning to present indicators of contamination from sewage, agricultural waste, microplastics.
After years of devotion, worldwide quests to about 50 springs like Evian’s Cachat Spring, and greater than a splash of mad science, MAYU was born. Their Swirl system is a machine that vortexes water, turning stagnant water right into a residing being, by aerating, restructuring and remineralizing it with mineral blends nature supposed. A bigger automated countertop dispenser, the MAYU II, is within the works.
Curating water with its personal character or nutrient mix
Are you an athlete who desires higher efficiency on your work-out? A mother or father who desires the healthiest water on your children? A hotelier that gives bespoke water with a taste resembling the terroir of the place?
Currently MAYU gives the Swirl to US customers. It sits in your kitchen desk. Ideally you add water from a reverse osmosis machine to it, activate the Swirl after which add drops of a formulated mineral combine you select. Want to drink water that’s like springs within the French Alps, water that works properly for being pregnant? Water that has the style of your childhood? Choose your mix.
The minerals and bodily course of made by MAYU restores water as if it had handed by means of miles of pure stone, choosing up minerals like calcium, magnesium and potassium, even hint quantities of platinum and gold, alongside the way in which. Water in nature is vortexed because it passes over rocks, and because it does it breathes in oxygen, evaporates out dangerous stuff such chlorine, CO2, undesirable odors, and different risky natural compounds. Like in nature, the MAYU style is healthier, and the pH is balanced.
Mother of Invention
Before Eden and Zohar had met round 2016, and began tinkering round in Hogla, Israel the place they’re at this time, each have been drawn to water in several methods. In his 20s Zohar had began each day spring dips on his option to artwork and design faculty in Jerusalem, a ritual that continues to at the present time, however on the sea. Shay, a mom and a potter, was creating natural vessels out of clay in the way of the ancients, to assist faucet water breathe and decontaminate.
Israel, as a backstory, has a historical past of pure springs of biblical proportions. Religious individuals immerse in a mikveh–– in residing water –– resembling a spring, the ocean, or water collected from rainfall. Bible legend has it that the primary water created in Genesis originated from a spring within the Old City of Jerusalem. You can go to that spring at this time.
There are different legends: when the Jews have been wandering within the desert for 40 years, a spring would comply with them each time Moses’ sister Miriam would play her drum. Some locals declare the spring is now showing in the midst of the Sea of Galilee.
Water in Israel is non secular and there may be not solely water, however hearth within the eyes of Eden and Zohar, after they speak about MAYU, or the well being of their children. Zohar had first met Eden about wholesome meals choices for his daughter, “she was identified within the village because the wizard for well being meals,” he recollects. “I by no means thought concerning the water I’m ingesting –– till my daughter was born.”
“Yeah, I could make wholesome meals enjoyable,” Eden, now a mom of three, laughs. “But irrespective of how wholesome your meals is, it ends at water.”
And that’s after they began brainstorming.
They wanted to unravel the water downside that persists on the faucet. Heavy metals and different contaminants resembling prescription drugs stick round. “Even if the water is clear on the supply the place it’s processed, it received’t be by the point it reaches your faucet,” Eden says holding chunks of brown bits they’d collected from the faucet of their lab, an area that was once her childhood kitchen: “Asbestos pipes, lead, agriculture runoff, industrial waste –– all of it leaks into the previous pipes that carry the water to your own home.”
The second of reality, that Eureka second occurred after they discovered the analysis of Viktor Schauberger “the Tesla of water,” says Zohar. “Nothing acts like water. It’s an anomaly. It behaves like a component. There is hearth. Then there may be water.”
“Through him we discovered the voice of reality about water,” Eden defined. “He talked concerning the motion of water. How water works.”
Schauberger who died in 1958 was an Austrian forest caretaker, scientist, inventor and biomimicry experimenter.
Ze’ev then all of a sudden introduced to me, ‘‘we’re going to create water” and I informed him you’re merely loopy –– solely God can try this,” Eden recounts. But true to the mission, “The first years right here have been like a prepare station, with scientists and water lovers coming and going. All the water geeks of the world have been right here. We needed to soak up, comprehend and mimic nature,” Eden tells Green Prophet.
Shaken or stirred?
MAYU solves two large issues. One is clear water, wealthy with important minerals, however the second is an effective different to our plastic bottle dependancy pushed by soda and meals multinationals resembling Nestle. We see the issue within the US, however should you go to a growing area just like the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, each hut within the village can have circumstances of Dasani water bottles (made by Coke), which find yourself floating into the ocean and coral reefs. There isn’t any different choice for clear water in these distant places. China, Thailand, Brazil. The story is identical.
The MAYU machine can put water bottlers out of enterprise, and might substitute one hundred pc of all of the plastics at dwelling and the workplace. The query for buyers is the place is the enterprise?
Water bottling is an enormous enterprise around the globe. Data Bridge Market Research says that the worldwide bottled water market was valued at 283.6 billion USD in 2021 and is predicted to succeed in the worth of 476.45 billion USD by 2029, at a CAGR of 6.7% through the forecast interval of 2022 to 2029. Last 12 months the US alone consumed an estimated $40 billion value of bottled water (Grand View Research), a majority which was nonetheless, not glowing, water.
According to Seth Siegel, creator of Let There Be Water, a NY Times bestseller, and an investor in MAYU, one in three American households have stopped ingesting faucet water. More than 74 billion water bottles are introduced into American households and 67% of these are for bottled water. Greenpeace launched a jaw-dropping expose in 2022 that only 5% of plastics can be recycled.
MAYU was based in 2018 and employs 4 individuals in Hogla, Israel. Elad Erdan is the corporate’s CEO, who has a observe report that suited the values of the 2 founders: he labored in enterprise improvement for Colu, a community-building app for American native governments workplaces, and at Israel’s largest renewable power firm Energix.
To date, MAYU has gross sales and has raised $2.2 million USD of a $3 million seed spherical at a $7.5 million USD valuation. Seed funds will assist MAYU launch the bigger automated MAYU II unit, with a producing associate in Korea.
The firm’s belongings embrace a patented course of for liquifying minerals. The supplies added are labeled by the FDA with GRAS designation, which suggests secure. Consumable mineral packs is the larger enterprise mannequin together with an enchantment to supply customized recipes for water. If you’re a chef who owns a Michelin star restaurant maybe you’d wish to develop your individual water mix? Or what about being pregnant? Zohar experimented on his pregnant spouse. He tinkered round and developed a water mineral combination that stopped her leg spasms. The secret: micro dosing of magnesium and potassium all through the day.
For those who need to purchase at this time a Swirl tabletop model prices about $180 plus minerals, $14.95 for 60 liters of water. Competition within the house consists of Aqua Tru Water (US) , Berkey Filters (US), and Mitte (Germany).
Erdan, the CEO, sees the enterprise of water, like Apple’s app retailer: “We are a market for water functions,” he says. “We will present the capsules and different merchandise like nutritional vitamins and premium merchandise might be delivered by means of our requirements and high quality system.”
Larger industrial programs that work for accommodations, eating places and faculty dorm rooms are additionally being piloted together with the hopes of making a extra excellent world: whereas we will’t all begin water witching for natural springs in our backyard, we will a minimum of attempt to mimic pure springs at dwelling.
New Age individuals and uncooked water lovers are enthusiastic about all of this: is MAYU trying past the chemical facet of purification and searching holistically on the means the water flows, creating structured water, also called hexagonal water, which is when the water molecules type a hexagonal cluster.
Structured water is claimed to have very shut similarities to pure and uncontaminated water present in pure springs and glacier melts. If you have been at an precise supply spring you’ll simply drink it out of your fingers, however when ingesting MAYU, glass solely please: “Because water dissolves all the things, even hint quantities of silica in glass, and it’s a extra highly effective solvent when it’s very pure,” Eden explains, elevating a glass to toast and filling up my water bottle earlier than I hit the street again to Tel Aviv.
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