The Briiv Air Filter Is the Moss-Powered Air Purifier You Need
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Contributor Michelle Mastro’s Briiv Air Filter review includes everything you should know before buying—including background on its use of moss (a natural purifier!), exactly how well it can cleanse the air in a given space, and her final verdict.
Confession: I have climate anxiety—I’m perpetually worrying about my carbon footprint. Thoughts of unrecycled plastic keep me up at night, as do fears of raging fires from a warming planet—like those I’ve experienced in Southern California (not to mention the currently worsening fires in Canada as we speak). I’m also very conscious of how much waste I generate every day, as well as how I might better upcycle rather than throw away homewares—so you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn about Briiv, an air purifier aiming to use only natural materials like coconut and moss to cleanse the atmosphere.
Though working to clean indoor air pollutants, air purifiers themselves are very polluting devices that, more often than not, end up in landfills (HEPA filters, for example, have limited lifespans and take thousands of years to decompose). But besides helping the planet, Briiv is beautiful. Its open glass jar houses a tiny forest of evergreen hued reindeer moss and underneath that is a crisp mat of coconut fibers.
Why moss?
Briiv uses natural air filters made from coconut and a biodegradable “matrix filter” (a blend of carbon-infused hemp and a woolen microfiber), but the most apparent bio material is moss. Even though the moss is dried, it pulls out particles, pollen, pet dander, and dust from the air. According to Briiv’s managing director, James Whitfield, “Moss’ natural microstructure makes it highly effective at capturing larger particles in your air, such as dust, hair, and pet dander.” And it’s even better than trees or houseplants at producing oxygen, having the oxygen-making power of 3,043 medium-size houseplants. Though moss doesn’t have roots, it does have some small hairlike structures that pull in nutrients and breathe out oxygen. “While trees have their air cleaning properties, the microstructure of moss allows it to capture particles in our air that can irritate and negatively affect us in our homes,” James adds.
But you can’t simply take moss from the wild and bring it indoors. “For the moss to continue to filter your air effectively, it has to be preserved, which we do naturally and ethically, to stop it from drying out and breaking down,” James says. “This preservation process is important to keep the moss usable in Briiv. We’re technically not the first to do this.” He points out that, during WWI, army medics used dried moss to help in the bandaging process. “During the plague they often used moss in their face masks. So using moss is not necessarily a new idea, just rather a more forgotten one.”
Setup
The Briiv’s setup is very straightforward. The device includes a black plastic base, three organic filters, a glass jar, and a woven black USB power cable. First, I placed the matrix filter onto the black base. This matrix filter can last three months and captures fine particles and volatile organic compounds (things like emissions from glue, permanent markers, and nonorganic paint.) Then I added the coconut filter, which lasts for one year and targets particles in the air like dust and smoke.
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