Excellent information! Thanks for sharing. Agree that LifeStraw seems a lesser choice in many ways, but if I understand correctly, they were a fairly early example of cheap filters and we're aimed at providing clean drinking water to third world residents, especially children. I know for a while, at least, they marketed that they were donating one for every one purchased, so seemed to have an altruistic mission similar to one laptop per child? Not sure how legit that turned out. Am with you on Sawyer for sure and agree that it's backflushing feature, syringe even included, is pretty awesome compared with LS. Pleasure to meet you!