My Lifestraw Pitcher Review (After 6+ Months of Use)

I first heard about the Lifestraw Pitcher when I was pregnant with my daughter, and living abroad in Europe. I think it was in Kickstarter mode at the time. And I was super excited to support the only water filter pitcher I knew of that filtered out microplastics. We were lucky to live in a big city that excellent quality water, but I am very aware of what a huge problem ingesting microplastics are. I figured getting them out of my daughter’s main water supply at a very early age was a no brainer.

Only problem? They didn’t ship to Europe.

Fast forward a few years later, and we’re back living in North America. While we feel extremely fortunate to live somewhere with excellent water, I’m definitely still concerned about microplastics.

So as soon as it made sense to do so, I smashed that order button.

And then I patiently waited for my gorgeous Lifestraw water filter pitcher to arrive.

A lifestraw pitcher in white (glass) on a marble kitchen countertop

Note: I pined after the Lifestraw Home for several years and ordered it for myself, paying full price. In other words? This post isn’t sponsored. That said, I have included affiliate links in the article. If you do purchase something via the affiliate links, I may receive compensation.

What is Lifestraw?

Lifestraw is what I’d call a water safety company. Their whole company is built around the ethos that everyone deserves safe drinking water. And they make a range of products to achieve that mission (and do it as a Climate Neutral Certified Brand!).

One of their best known products is the Lifestraw, a survival water filtration device that filters out bad stuff like bacteria, parasites, microplastics, dirt and sand, and water cloudiness. You can basically stick a Lifestraw in a dirty creek, and drink safe water. It’s pretty remarkable! I own several Lifestraws, which I have stashed around our house and in our car in case of emergency, such as an earthquake or large forest fire. If you don’t have Lifestraws for your emergency kit, I highly recommend getting a few to stash in your home and cars, just in case.

2 Lifestraw water filtration straws in their packaging on a patterned area rug

Lifestraw also makes refillable water bottles, which are super popular for travelers. You can take the bottle with you to countries where you can’t drink the tap water, fill it up with tap water, and voila – you’ve got a safe supply of water, and didn’t contribute to plastic water bottle waste in that country. My husband and I lived in Mexico for about 6 months, and I shudder to think back on how much single-use plastic we went through during that time, just for our drinking water.

Lifestraw has a range of products around water filtration, but their latest addition to the lineup is the Lifestraw Home, which is a water pitcher that gives you all the Lifestraw goodness and filtration, meant for use at home.

What is the Lifestraw Home (aka: the Lifestraw Glass Water Filter Pitcher)?

The Lifestraw Home is a water pitcher that removes bacteria, parasites and microplastics, and reduces lead, mercury, PFAS (aka: forever chemicals), chlorine, herbicides, pesticides, dirt, sand, and cloudiness from your water home water supply.

It does so without getting rid of the minerals your body needs (i.e. magnesium and potassium).

And in my personal opinion (and the random taste tests I’ve made different guests do over the 6 months we’ve had it), it makes your water taste more neutral and fresh.

If you live somewhere with unsafe tap water, it can mean the difference between having safe water in your home – without buying it in a plastic bottle or having it delivered – or not.

If you are lucky enough to live somewhere with safe tap water, it can offer an extra layer of protection against nasty chemicals, as well as reducing the amount of microplastics you and your family inadvertently consume over the course of a lifetime.

Benefits of the Lifestraw Pitcher Water Filter

It Comes in a Glass Version (Hooray for Non-Toxic!)

Besides the fact that it actually works to filter out bad stuff from our water, this is one of my favorite things about this water filter pitcher.

While you can buy a plastic version, you can also get a Lifestraw Home that’s made of FDA-Food Grade compliant borosilicate glass.

I have a glass one and I love that’s it’s made of glass, not plastic.

I also love that it’s made of shatter resistant glass, which I was worried about when I ordered it. The base of the glass pitcher comes with a silicone sleeve type thing. You stretch it over the base, and it provides a bit of a cushion when placing the pitcher on a hard surface. We have Corian-style counters that are pretty hard. So far, the silicone cushion has worked well for us to protect the pitcher.

A hand pulls away the silicone sleeve from the bottom of a lifestraw home water filter pitcher

Most of the other filter pitchers I found were made of some form of plastic. But given the state of the earth, and the fact that I bought the filter to reduce micro plastics in my family’s life, I really appreciated the choice to buy glass instead of plastic.

While the lid and filter housing is made of plastic, I’m less concerned about it, as the water doesn’t stay in contact with the lid or filter housing for a prolonged amount of time.

It’s Actually a Beautiful Pitcher

Okay…I love that it’s made of glass, but I also love that it looks good on my counter. It’s not clunky or boxy, and has super clean lines and a sleek design that looks like the kind of kitchen accessory you’d buy at a museum gift shop somewhere in Scandinavia.

It’s been on my kitchen counter for 6 or more months now, and I like the way it looks sitting next to our Click and Grow (I’m currently growing all the basil!) and Ninja!

From left to right: a Ninja blender base, a Lifestraw Pitcher for water filtration, Kitchen utensils, a Click and Grow growing seedlings, and a pepper mill on a grey kitchen counter

(You can also put it in your fridge, I just choose not to because I prefer room temperature drinking water).

It’s Easy to Fill

The pitcher filter has what I’d call an easy fill lid.

What makes an easy fill lid, you ask? Basically, I can do it one handed, and I don’t have to take the lid off to fill it up.

The lid hinges in the middle. When you put the water filter pitcher under a running tap, the weight of the water pushes the lid to one side, exposing the opening where the water fills up.

Filling the Lifestraw Water Filter Pitcher with tap water in the sink using one hand, using the hinged easy fill lid

I’ve used other water filter pitchers in the past, and hated fiddling with the lid to get it off and then correctly position it to put it all back together again.

I have also found other water filter pitchers have lids that don’t fit great, or even fall out when you’re pouring water into a glass. That’s not the case with the Lifestraw Home: the lid fits snuggly in the pitcher, and stays in place when pouring.

Goodbye Plastic Water Bottle Waste

We’re extremely good about plastic water bottle waste in our house. Basically, we don’t buy plastic water bottles ever, because we fill our own reusable bottles at home, and take them with us.

But, if you’re prone to buying plastic water bottles because you don’t like the taste of your water, and want to break the habit, I think the Lifestraw Home can help because it gives water a more neutral flavor.

If you’ve ever compared the taste of tap water to that that’s been through reverse osmosis, then you’ll know what I mean – the reverse osmosis water tastes way more neutral!

It’s the same with the Lifestraw home. The filtered water tastes better than the tap water.

One of the Only Water Filter Pitchers to Get Rid of Microplastics

By this point, we all know that microplastics are a problem, and they’re bad.

Researchers estimate Americans eat between 106 to 142 microplastic particles per day, and get between 10 particles per day (if you only drink tap water) and 246 particles per day (if you only drink water from a plastic water bottle) through their water consumption. [source]

It’s really important to me my family receives safe water and food, and uses mostly very safe products (yes – we still have a lot of plastic toys and polyester princess dresses, which I just don’t have a solution for at this point). It’s one of the reasons my daughter drinks out of glass cups at home (we use the Duralex tumblers now that she’s a little older), instead of plastic, and now uses metal utensils, too.

Since we only drink tap water in our house, that means I can expect the Lifestraw home to save each of us from consuming 3,650 microplastic particles per year, or 36,500 for the next 10 years of my daughter’s life.

The Lifestraw Water Filter Pitcher removes up to 99.999% of microplastics via the microfilter.

The microfilter works due to its size: it filters to a particle size of 0.2 microns, and the smallest microplastics found in human blood to date are 0.7 microns (0.0007mm). In other words? Microplastics are too large to get through the microfilter.

Double Filtration

The micofilter is only one part of the filter system. The Lifestraw home also uses an activated carbon filter and ion exchange filter system.

Lifestraw home filter components including the microfilter on the left and activated carbon filter and ion exchange filter on the right against a wooden background.

Microfilter

This is the first stage of the Lifestraw’s slow filtering system, and it works via pore size. Anything larger than the filter’s 0.2 micron (200 nanometers) sized pores can’t get through the filter. This means the filter traps them, and filters them out, and you can see little particles in the image below, in the bottom right area of my microfilter (on the left of the image).

A hand holds the Lifestraw home microfilter up close

By design, the 0.2 microns (2000 nanometers) of the microfilter pores are too small for a lot of bad stuff to make it through:

While the microfilter filters a lot out of your water, it doesn’t get everything. For example, many viruses are small enough to get through. A rotavirus virus particle is 70 nanometers – small enough to get through the microfilter. To get rid of viruses, you need a Lifestraw product with an Ultrafilter, which has even smaller pores for filtration.

Activated Carbon Filter + Ion exchange filter

The second stage of the water filtration gets rid of chemicals and heavy metals.

A woman's hand holds the activated carbon filter ion exchange filter from a Lifestraw home water filter pitcher

Whereas the microfilter physically blocks particles from getting through, the activate carbon stage works by absorption. Basically, the carbon captures the heavy metals and chemicals, and they get stuck when trying to pass through.

The ion exchange filter is a bit above my pay-grade, science wise (I try, I try), so I’m going to let Lifestraw explain this part (source):

Ion exchange contains a resin with cations that are bound to the fibers and are not harmful. When liquids containing other solvent ions pass through the fibers, the dissolved ions in the water (such as lead and other heavy metals) are exchanged for the non-harmful ions in the fibers. As a result, harmful elements are trapped, and non-harmful ions are released, making the water safer to drink.

It Gets Rid of Bad Stuff, but Retains Essential Minerals

The Lifestraw water filter pitcher gets rid of a lot of bad stuff, with independent testing to back up the claims. You can see the full performance data here, but a few key facts include:

  • It removes chemicals including PFAS, glyphosate, chlorine, and PFAS (PFAO/PFOS) “forever chemicals”
  • The filter pitcher achieves at least a 96.7% in lead
  • 99.999999% removal for Bacteria
  • 99.999% for parasites/amoebas/cysts
  • 99.999% for microplastics

While it removes a lot, it doesn’t get rid of essential minerals like magnesium, sodium potassium, and calcium, which is great news.

The Water Tastes Sooooo Good

This is a personal opinion. BUT, I’ve also done blind taste tests for guests visiting our house. So far, everyone has preferred the taste of the filtered water!

It’s Easy to Set Up

Final thing I love about the Lifestraw Pitcher Filter is how easy it is to set up.

Basically, you put the white filter housing in the glass pitcher, push the microfilter through the hole at the bottom, and then add the activated carbon ion exchange filter, securing it with a little cap. It takes almost no time to get all the pieces together.

Once you start using it, the water will be slow filtering to start – don’t worry, this speeds up to a normal speed pretty quickly!

Final Thoughts on the Lifestraw Pitcher

This has been a great purchase for me and my family. I bought it primarily because of its ability to filter out micro plastics, and the fact that the pitcher itself is glass, not plastic. We’re very lucky to live somewhere with safe water. Before purchasing, I wasn’t as concerned about filtering out some of the other things the Lifestraw can tackle. However, now that I know what I know? I’m absolutely convinced this was the right product for my family’s water supply.

I hope this Lifestraw pitcher review helps your family make a choice that’s right for you.

You can purchase the same one I have on Amazon, here.

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