Design missing the point

From the Make Blog:

This winner of the Innovate or Die competition filters water through pedal power:

A peristaltic pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large tank, through a carbon filter, to a smaller clean tank. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while traveling or while stationary.

 So it's designed to provide both transport and filtration of the water? Excellent idea! Except, how much does one of these cost? No numbers. But let's see.. tricycle frame with special welding requirements to house clutch and peristaltic pump, plus complete body plastic cover, specificly sized slip-on water bottles, mounts..

If this were on sale in the UK, I'd expect it to go for perhaps £500, maybe more. How are poverty stricken families who may not earn more than that every few years supposed to afford one? Community buying? Yeah, whose family gets to live today?

Also a carbon filter is great against particules and some chemicals, but won't work against bacteria. Plus you have to sit out on it peddling to force it through it. How much body energy does that use?

If you want to make it easier for people to get thier water home, why not just send them a load of lawn rollers? You know, the thick steel barrels you fill with water that flatten your lawn. Only here they'd carry drinking water, and probably make the roads flatter too.

Get it back and put it into a simple gravity-charcoal filter, then feed that into a simple solar evaporator, possibly with a visible spectrum filter on it. Let the UV through to kill bugs, and the IR to evaporate it. Not perfect, but a damn site more afforadable and less fragile.

The sheer amount of pointless useless wastefull engineering out there makes me want to kick puppies. I swear I could retire a millionaire selling DVD Rewinders through the "Inovations" mail order catalogue.