Mitte: Create your own mineral water, just like nature

Mitte is the first of its kind smart home water system that purifies and enhances water through a process inspired by the natural water cycle. It works in two simple steps: first, it purifies water with a proprietary distillation-based method. Then, Mitte makes the water not only pure, but also healthy by enhancing it with essential minerals.

In 2015, Co-founder and CTO Faebian explored methods of water purification and mineralization as a side project to his university career. Inspired by the natural water cycle, he replicated the process in a machine. Two years later, that idea became the beautiful Mitte you see today.

"Some 21 mineral elements are known to be essential for humans." - World Health Organization, Report on Nutrients in Drinking Water, 2005. 

Water can be an essential source of minerals for the human body, and many minerals have higher bioavailability in water than in food, such as calcium and magnesium. However, other water purification systems remove important healthy minerals in water along with the contaminants, creating water that’s only pure, but not healthy.

Mitte solves this problem by using mineral cartridges to replicate the process that occurs in nature when water flows through rocks, picking up minerals along the way. This unique process adds back all the minerals and trace elements that other water purifiers remove, giving you water that’s not just clean, but also healthy.

Our replaceable patent-pending mineral cartridges come in three varieties, creating waters with different mineral properties, similar to bottled mineral waters. Now you can personalize your water to suit your lifestyle and taste. Whether you prefer a clean balanced everyday water, a sophisticated high mineral hit, or high PH water for detox and fitness. There’s a Mitte to suit every need.

You can even specify the exact temperature (between 5 to 92 degrees Celsius, 41 to 197 Fahrenheit) and amount dispensed (between 50 to 1000 ml, 2 to 34 fl oz), effectively replacing your water kettle.

mitte® balance 

A soft water with a balanced neutral taste and zero sodium. mitte® Balance is an everyday water, perfect for baby food preparation and tea or coffee brewing. 

mitte® vitality 

A crisp drinking water with a high mineral content and complex flavor profile, ® Vitality is great for those looking to benefit from essential minerals for improved physical and mental performance. 

mitte® alkaline 

A high-PH water rich in minerals and antioxidants. mitte® Alkaline helps combat acidity and fights free radicals in your body. It also eases recovery after intense physical activities, leading to increased energy levels and better health.

The Mitte app allows you to monitor current cartridge usage and set up (optional) demand-driven automatic ordering of new mineral cartridges. We will only send you a new cartridge when your current one is running low.

The truth is that our tap water is not as clean as we might like to think. It can contain contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, hormones, nitrates, fluorides and microplastics.

As a case in point, The Guardian recently published an article on the widespread contamination of microplastics in our tap water. ‘Billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles with 83% of all samples - and 94% of US samples - found to be polluted’. These microplastics remain in the body for years after consumption, with unknown consequences. 

The contamination is made very apparent with our machine. After purification, about 3% of the water that enters Mitte is collected as waste water. A brown cocktail of dirt, which otherwise ends up in our body. A side note: next to high concentrations of lead, Uranium (3x above the maximum allowance!) was discovered in our office’s tap water.

Our patent-pending (EU patent n° EP17154125) distillation chamber is based on the principle of a thermoelectric heat pump, driven by two Peltier elements. We have termed the system Peltier-driven-Distillation (PDD). Catchy, right? 

Compared to other filtration-only systems such as pitcher filters or filters integrated into fridges, Mitte purifies water of all contaminants, such as harmful hormones, nitrates, fluorides, and microplastics. The result is perfect, pure water as the basis for re-mineralization.

Your Mitte machine is part of a connected ecosystem. Mitte syncs up with the mobile app to further personalize the experience, giving you additional control and insights. 

The app enables you to:

• Dispense water with specific water temperature and amount
• Get real-time information on water quality and machine usage
• Monitor mineral cartridge levels and manage cartridge ordering
• and much more...

With Mitte in your kitchen you have your own mineral water bottling facility at the push of a button. In fact, as you can choose different mineral cartridges, it’s more like having three.

Each cartridge produces 400 liters of healthy water, enough to last around 3 months for a family of four. At a price of €40, €45, and €50 for mitte® Balance, Vitality, and Alkaline respectively, your Mitte water will cost between €0.10 ($0.12) and €0.13 ($0.15) per liter - cheaper and better than your overpriced bottled water brands.

The insatiable demand for bottled water is a huge problem. Plastic bottles are finding their way into the human food chain and polluting every natural system on the planet. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis that will be as serious as climate change.
Mitte eliminates the need for plastic bottles, leading to a fundamental reduction in plastic waste, water waste, and carbon dioxide emissions.

Furthermore, we are looking at options of how to minimize our environmental impact by using bioplastics for our mineral cartridges and having a circular system, in which users send back their used cartridges.

Using the initial technology (based on the water cycle) as a starting point, Faebian and CEO Moritz began the process of turning the prototype - which was the size of a kitchen table - into a compact and efficient machine. They were soon joined by a passionate and experienced team from all over the world. The result is the high-performance Mitte that you see today.

 Our prototypes from over 18 months of development

For those who enjoy geeking out on the tech please click here.

Design is at the heart of what we believe in. We consider design not just the pretty shell (yes that’s also important), but also an elegant and user friendly solution to an important problem.
Mitte has been through hundreds of iterations over 18 months, from sketches and ideas to cardboard mocks-ups, 3-D prints and prototypes, all leading to our fully operational model.

The evolution of Mitte’s design 

Mitte Specs Sheet 

Besides providing individual households with clean and healthy water through Mitte, we also want to bring safe water to the 663 million people in need around the world. We’ve made it our goal to create impact by partnering up with American NGO, Water.org.

For each liter of water consumed by a Mitte customer, 10 liters of clean water is provided through Water.org to people who need it most. Water.org is constructing water wells and conducting hygiene education, helping families to get access to safe water and improved sanitation.

We have been working on Mitte for over 18 months to create a connected eco-system: our hardware, app, mineral cartridges, and cloud back-end. The machine you see in the video and the ecosystem around it are real working prototypes. It’s exciting to see how far we’ve come, but now we need your help to start production and to bring Mitte to the world.
So far we have:

• Formed an awesome team in Berlin
• Talked to hundreds of potential users
• Built and tested 4 generations of prototypes 
• Made sure all the materials are food-grade and comply with all regulations 
• Determined ingredients and compositions of mineral cartridges based on user needs, in-depth research and lots of experiments 
• Written and optimized thousands of lines of code for our firmware and cloud backend 
• Built an App for both iOS and Android 
• Engineered the system ready for mass production 
• Partnered with an amazing manufacturer, who has produced products for Keurig and Lavazza

With your help we will:

• Refine our engineering in a step that is called Design-for-Manufacture Engineering 
• Create the tools required for mass production with our manufacturing partner 
• Set up our first production run
• Run a test production of the Alpha Units 
• Improve lives with healthy water! 

15 people. 12 countries. 1 team in Berlin to solve a global problem.

This project is promoted by Jellop, a direct­ response online advertising agency specializing in Kickstarter campaigns on Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.

Risks and challenges

Mitte will be built by our experienced manufacturing partner. With production facilities in Shenzhen, China, they understand every step from design to direct fulfilment and is the partner for many of the leading beverage companies.

We began collaborating at the Engineering Concept stage and have been in extremely close contact with the Mechanical, Electrical and Production engineers. All along, we have been supported by Frank of Onyx Europe - a true Design-For-Manufacture veteran - who has been working with us for over a year.

Our next step is to finalize the Design-for-Manufacture engineering. Moritz, the mechanical design lead, will actually move to China to oversee the collaboration at the Shenzen pre-production facility. We will then build the tools end of 2017, get the final assembly line going, install testing equipment and do two more builds for stress testing before beginning production.

We believe that the risks described above are manageable, and we’re confident in our ability to deliver. We have the right talent and resources in place to meet our deadlines and get Mitte to you in time. Of course, we will be keeping our supporters in the loop and inform you of the progress. Join us on our journey!