A new machine extracts sweat from clothes and purifies it, a soccer tournament hopes players will turn in their sweaty shirts and grab a glass of purified perspiration.
The development of the machine is part of a campaign to get clean water, and the global lack of it, on people's minds, a UNICEF press release reported.
UNICEF teamed up with an international kid's soccer tournament, Gothia cup, to kick off the unusual campaign.
"We wanted to raise this subject in a new, playful and engaging way. Our 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," Per Westberg, Deputy Executive Director at UNICEF Sweden said.
The machine uses new HVR Water Purification AB technology developed at the Royal Institute of Technology .
"There are many different techniques to extract and purify water. 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," Andreas Hammar, who developed the machine, said. "It is hard to believe, but the water extracted from the machine is actually cleaner than ordinary Swedish tap water."
Two famous soccer players, Tobias Hysén and Mohammed Ali Khan, were the first to try a glass of the purified sweat.
The campaign urges participants in the Gothia cup to hand in their sweaty clothes and grab a glass of the purified perspiration.
The product hasn't been able to generate as much water as the developers had hoped, the BBC reported.
"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," Mattias Ronge, chief executive of the advertising agency Deportivo that worked on the campaign, said.
"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," he said.
