The young women Anally, Júlia Rodrigues and Keiko Hanasiro, aged 15, created Vitágua at school. It is an experiment that treats water from taps and showers before it is dumped into the city's rivers. Anally and Júlia live in Taboão da Serra, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, and Keiko lives in Jaguaré, in the West Zone of the city. They had the idea of creating a prototype to clean water when they realized that the sewage treatment system where they live was ineffective.
“Our device has three main phases. In the first stage, the water is purified using banana peels, which help eliminate pesticides and agrochemicals present in domestic sewage; in the second part, a bacterium (Bacillus Subtilis) is used, which feeds on micro-pollutants in sewage; and, in the last phase, we use a biodegradable detergent, which dissolves fats and triglycerides in the water. The water then goes into the sewage system already treated,” explains Júlia Rodrigues.
