Meet Anna Luísa Beserra, a Brazilian scientist whose teenage idea turned dirty water into drinking water using just sunlight

Anna Luisa Beserra is currently known as an environmental entrepreneur. But before she went into business, she was an environmental changemaker. At just 15, she came up with Aqualuz, a system that uses just sunlight to eliminate microorganisms in rainwater without chemicals or complex filters.As a teenager, Beserra was motivated by the lack of clean drinking water for millions of people in Brazil and decided to do something about it. “I knew then that if I created something easy to use and replicate, communities could take control of purifying their own water,” Beserra told UNESCO.The system created by Beserra, called Aqualuz, is affordable, sustainable and designed to last up to 20 years, offering a lasting alternative to temporary filtering solutions. The technology was designed for families relying on rainwater cisterns in semi-arid regions and is already in use in rural Brazil, benefiting more than 10,000 people and reaching 40,000 in 2024 alone.The idea was simple yet precise. Aqualuz is a rainwater treatment system that uses solar radiation to purify collected water safely and affordably by killing microorganisms. The device gave rural households a way to secure clean drinkin...