About

Many use their water filter pitchers every day, and they are still pretty much the same as twenty years ago: cheap plastic that breaks, too big and clunky for the table, and water all over the counter if you pour a glass mid-filtering.

So rather than designing another pitcher, I started by breaking down the ritual itself. Each step became a design question. The filling should be effortless. What does the waiting look like? Where does it live when it's not in use? What is the serving like, and what does the carafe look like on the table? And lastly: what does the water taste like?

These are sensory considerations, and we grant them to most other items in the kitchen, from the tools we use to what we eat and drink. Except, strangely, to water.

It took a while to get right, but I'm really proud of the result and I hope you like your BELON!

Jonas

The name BELON comes from the belon, a European flat oyster raised where the Belon river meets the sea in Brittany, France.

An oyster spends its life filtering the water it lives in, just like our funnel. It's not an all-in-one filter pitcher. It's a tool that works with gravity. Meant to live between the faucet and the water you drink.

Honesty

After first studying this industry (reading numerous lab reports, talking to certification labs and vendors, working with different filter companies, going to water conferences), and now being part of it, it's clear that there is a lot of confusion regarding performance claims, certifications, etc. We are trying to be as clear as we can, but if you do have questions, don't hesitate to ask us.

Materials

We believe in honest materials and materials that last. We try to avoid plastic as much as possible. Designing the drip stop mechanism using plastic would be the easier cheaper way but we decided against it.

When we do use plastic, we use polypropylene, which is naturally free from BPA. We make sure that no compounds that can contain PFAS are used in production, and we test the raw material rigorously to make sure it is not leaching anything harmful into the water.

The environment

We do everything that we can to use materials that are as good as possible. The factory in China that we chose to work with for the funnel runs on renewable energy, and the funnel is made from 90% post-consumer recycled stainless steel. The box is made from recycled paper.

The filter media itself is not just biodegradable but compostable — cellulose fibers and activated carbon made from coconut husks, with no plastic resins or binders for the water to pass through, as is the case in most filters.

That said, there are always areas to improve. The caps are made from polypropylene, and the media is potted into the caps with a polymer resin. We want to find ways of making the filter even more environmentally friendly. As a small company, it takes time.