The first SolarSack was developed on a research trip to the Adjumani refugee camp in Uganda, 2017. The founder, Alexander Locke, submitted the solution as part of his Master’s thesis in Industrial Design Engineering. While spending time in the refugee camp, it was clear to him that the area struggled with deforestation as the residents were forced to cut down trees in order to boil water. This sparked an idea to develop an alternative to boiling water that would not negatively impact the environment while still providing safe and clean drinking water. After several workshops with local residents, Alexander was able to prototype an improvement to the Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) method in a multi-layered plastic bag composition that allowed purification using only the sun rays. This was the invention of SolarSack.