Soccer players and fans were able to get a sip of their own sweat at this year’s Gothia Cup in Gothenburg – an international children’s soccer tournament. A newly developed device called the “Sweat Machine” extracts and purifies sweat from clothes, transforming it into clean drinkable water. The machine was exhibited at the tournament as part of a campaign to raise awareness about the global lack of clean water.

UNICEF partnered up with Gothia cup to run the campaign, titled “United for children”, and raise money for water purification tablets for children. The organizers of the event encouraged participants to hand in their sweaty clothes and take a sip of clean drinking water which was once sweat.

Per Westberg, Deputy Executive Director at UNICEF Sweden, said that “United for children” is trying to raise awareness of the lack of clean water in a “new, playful and engaging way.”

The unusual “Sweat Machine” is a reminder that “we all share the same water. We all drink and sweat in the same way, regardless of how we look or what language we speak. Water is everyone’s responsibility and concern.”

The Sweat Machine was built by Engineer Andreas Hammar using HVR Water Purification AB technology developed at the The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

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The Sweat Machine turns sweat into drinking water

Hammar said that there are a number of ways to extract and purify water, but “the technical challenge was to build the sweat machine like in the space travel industry, where every filthy water drop whether it’s cooling water, urine or just sweat, is invaluable. It is hard to believe, but the water extracted from the machine is actually cleaner than ordinary Swedish tap water.”

Mattias Ronge, chief executive of Stockholm-based advertising agency Deportivo, who was involved in organizing the event, said that the machine has managed to raise awareness, but is not the best solution.

He said: “People haven’t produced as much sweat as we hoped – right now the weather in Gothenburg is lousy. So we’ve installed exercise bikes alongside the machine and volunteers are cycling like crazy. Even so, the demand for sweat is greater than the supply. And the machine will never be mass produced – there are better solutions out there such as water purifying pills.”

Dennis Andersson, Secretary General of Gothia Cup, concluded: “We’re having fun and sweating together in the worlds biggest football tournament for youths. We are very proud to support an organisation like UNICEF in their mission to protect and promote childrens rights.”

Thousands of children die every day because of contaminated water. Approximately 80 percent of disease in developing countries are associated with bad water and sanitation.

An estimated 780 million people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water. In 2010, the U.N. General Assembly declared that access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a basic ‘human right’.