While it looks ever so simple, the Watercone® is a result 
not just of good design but serious development efforts with high-quality products.
:”…every day 5000 children die as a result of diarrhea coused by drinking unsafe water…” UNICEF
Clean water is a critical issue for literally billions of people around the world. Watercone® provides a path for distributed water desalinization from families in the desert to fisherman at sea seeking to make tea in the afternoon.
As for the tech side, the inventor tested plastic materials for years before arriving at a UV resistant Poly Carbonate product that can stand up to years of daily use. And, when it decayed for solar purification, it can be used for other things.
And, well, there were design challenges
that aren’t necessarily obviously at first blush. It turns out that one challenge is the contamination of water after it is purified amid disasters and many areas without good sanitation. The physical structure of the Watercone and its cork reduce (tremendously) the possibility that dirty hands will contanimate the water.
The Watercone is a real path toward reducing those diarrhea deaths and a case where someone truly Designed Something Like They Gave a Damn.